
Book._.i22'__. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 
AND THE TEACHER 



BY 

H. CRICHTON MILLER 

M.A., M.D., EDITOR "FUNCTIONAL NERVE DISEASES," HON. DIRECTOR 
TAVISTOCK CLINIC FOR FUNCTIONAL NERVE CASES 



W 



New York 

THOMAS SELTZER 
1922 



k6\ 



Copyright, 1922, by 
Thomas Seltzer, Inc. 



All Rights Reserved 



Printed in the United States or America 



MOV 18 '?2 
© CI A 6 8 (; 9 7 8 

nrwO I 



To 

MY CHILDREN 

' ^ token of my earnest effort to understand and inspire 

them; 
gratitude for all that they have taught me; 
•d in the hope that it may help them to be better parents 

than their father — 

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 



PREFACE 

' I ''HIS volume is based on a course of lec- 
"*■ tures delivered by the author to educa- 
tionalists under the auspices of the Tavistock 
Clinic for Functional Nerve Cases. The in- 
terest aroused by the lectures, and the appreci- 
ation expressed, seemed to warrant their ap- 
pearance in the present form ; but a few words 
of explanation are necessary. 

These chapters are addressed not only to 
those who are professional teachers, but to the 
wider public of those whose business in life 
calls them to share in the teaching of the 
young. They do not restrict themselves to 
modern analytical psychology, but, as the 
reader will see, they cover a certain amount 
of the older psychology that in the author's 
opinion merits emphasis. As far as the newer 
views are concerned, it will be seen that no 
attempt is made either to present the views of 
one school exclusively, nor yet to gloss over 
the differences between the two schools of 
Vienna and Zurich. The existence of these 
differences is of fundamental importance in 
two directions. In the first place, it is not 

5 



Preface 

recognized by many who follow the literature 
of psycho-analysis how completely contrasted 
are the philosophies implied by the teaching 
of the two schools. The "thorough-going 
determinism" of Freud is far removed from 
the free will implicit in all Jung's work. 

In the second place, the existence of these 
differences is the very obvious justification of 
a detached and critical attitude. It is a mat- 
ter for regret, though not for surprise, that 
this justification is not recognized by the 
founders of either school, and that they follow 
the example of most pioneers in resisting com- 
promise and criticism alike. 

Educationalists are, above all, people en- 
titled to exert freedom of criticism; for their 
interest is focused at a point where many paths 
meet: art and philosophy, body and mind, 
memory and imagination, science and religion 
— these are only a few of the paths that con- 
verge in their sphere. To offer to education- 
alists a panacea or a master key is to write 
oneself down an arrogant fanatic! It is to 
be hoped that these pages, in spite of a note 
of dogmatism that the reader may recognize, 
will be read as the contribution of a physician 
who is profoundly convinced that his sphere 
of action is and must always be of secondary 
importance. To the writer the application 

6 



Preface 

of psychological methods to the cure of 
nervous disorders is to their application in 
education as the cure of consumption is to its 
prevention. But consumption can only be 
prevented through the efforts of those who 
understand at least something of the laws in- 
volved in its treatment. It is not necessary 
that they should have been patients in a sana- 
torium. At the same time, three facts emerge 
from the analogy which are worth considera- 
tion. First, the pathologists tell us that nearly 
every town dweller, however healthy he may 
appear to be, harbours the tubercle bacillus. 
Similarly every educationalist, be he jlever 
so well-adjusted, harbours repressions that are 
potentially harmful. Secondly, every one en- 
gaged in the prevention of phthisis would 
profit from, or does profit from, those hygienic 
measures that constitute his propaganda. In 
like manner, there is not a school-teacher, nor 
yet a parent, who would not profit in his or 
her mental life from those principles of men- 
tal hygiene which this volume is meant to out- 
line. Finally, the work of preventing tuber- 
culosis is too vast and too pressing to be rele- 
gated exclusively to those who have had the 
experience of tubercular disease and sana- 
torium treatment. In the same way the appli- 
cation of analytical psychology to the needs 

7 



Preface 

of the young is too urgent and too extensive 
to be committed to the few, who by reason of 
a nervous breakdown or otherwise have had 
the privilege of sane analytical treatment. 

Those who share the writer's conviction, 
that it is for the new generation that the 
new teaching is most important, will also 
share his impatience with the obstructionists. 
Analytical views have spread so rapidly in 
the last eighteen years that the reactionaries 
will soon be negligible. But, as happens in 
every new movement with unfailing certainty, 
the more serious obstruction comes from 
within. It comes from the jealousy of the 
pioneers and their immediate followers, who, 
with the conscious motive of safeguarding the 
movement, proclaim loudly and indignantly 
that no one can heal who has not himself been 
healed, that no one can initiate who has not 
himself been initiated, and that no one can 
preach who has not been ordained. The un- 
conscious motive of the caste seems to elude 
the analyst's self-scrutiny, and he offers a 
sorry advertisement of his own vaunted ad- 
justment and freedom from complexes when 
in slightly altered phraseology he protests: 
"Master, we saw one casting out devils in 
Thy name, and we forbade him, because he 
foUoweth not us." If we are anywise fit to 

8 



Preface 

be teachers of the young, we shall recognize 
that no knowledge, creed, shibboleth, nor 
initiation can qualify us for our task, but 
primarily that vision which allows us to per- 
ceive the child's needs, his difficulties, and 
his possibilities. In the hope that these chap- 
ters may contribute at least in a small measure 
to that clearer vision, they are offered to 
teachers who are yet content to be learners. 
I take this opportunity of expressing my 
thanks to Miss L. V. Southwell, M.A., who 
has fulfilled the function, not only of an 
efficient and untiring secretary, but also of a 
most clear-sighted collaborator. To my wife 
I owe the debt which every writer owes to a 
critic who is both candid and constructive. 

H. C. M. 
Harley Street, 
London, W. 



NOTE 

THE substance of this book was contained in a 
course of lectures to teachers and others, given 
under the auspices of the Tavistock Clinic for Functional 
Nerve Cases, during the Spring Term, 1921. Some 
fresh material has been added. 

It is proposed to issue shortly two similar volumes 
entitled, The New Psychology and the Parent and The 
Psychology and the Preacher. These books are intended 
for different groups of readers, and they will be similar 
as regards some of the subject matter. They will differ 
in presentation and in the subject matter of the remainder. 
The additional matter in The New Psychology and the 
Preacher will be based upon a series of lectures delivered 
at Mirfield and at Westminster College, Cambridge. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I Introductory 13 

II Authority and Suggestibility . . 23 

III Reality and Phantasy ... 47 

IV Emotional Development: the Boy . 73 
V Emotional Development: the Girl . 95 

VI The Unconscious Motive . . .121 

VII Mental Mechanisms . . . .145 

VIII Dream Symbolism . . . .169 

IX The Herd Instinct and the Herd Ideal 195 

X Educational Methods . . .213 



II 



CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTORY 



The New Psychology and Psycho-Analysis. 

In What Sense Is It "New?" 

Not in the sense of conflicting with all pre-, 
existing theories. 

The Contribution of Clinical Psychology to 
Educational Problems. 

What has the New Psychology to Offer the 
Teacher? 

Not a magical solution. 

Analysis not applicable to the normal child. 

Analysis and self-knowledge. 

Test of its Value: 

Power to give the child spiritual freedom. 
Power to help the child in three ways. 

Purpose and Limitations of the Book. 



INTRODUCTORY 

^nr^HE title of this book needs a brief expla- 
■*- nation. To some people it will suggest 
a disingenuous evasion of the word "psycho- 
analysis." The term has been avoided out of 
respect for the limits to its application laid 
down by the Freudian School, who hold that 
"The Freudian theory and technique, and 
these alone, constitute psycho-analysis." ^ 
While recognizing the infinite debt which 
psychologists owe to the pioneer work of 
Freud, in discovering and applying the psy- 
cho-analytic method, the writer is unable to 
accept all the conclusions of the Freudian 
theory, and finds himself therefore debarred 
from using the term in its technical sense. 

Some critics will suggest that the principles 
discussed in this book ought not to be labelled 
"new." The psychological method which is 
outlined will seem to them merely an elaborate 
way of arriving at familiar conclusions. It 
should therefore be stated at the outset that 
this psychology is not "new" in the sense of 

^ Psycho-analysis J by Barbara Low. George Allen & 
Unwin, Ltd., 1920. p. 10. 

IS 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

conflicting with all pre-existing theories. On 
the contrary its conclusions have often reaf- 
firmed those which the experience of man- 
kind has long ago evolved and treasured. It 
is undeniable that analytical psychology re- 
peats a good deal of the wisdom of the 
nursery; many of the dictates of common 
sense that "continuous experience of the real" ; 
and it often follows with slow feet to a goal 
which the insight of poets and prophets 
reached at a bound. But if it is not always 
revolutionary, its method is sufficiently dis- 
tinct from that of the academic psychology 
to justify and demand the use of the word 
"new." No one who has studied its concep- 
tions can fail to realize that they introduce a 
fresh era into psychological thought. Lastly, 
we may perhaps borrow a reflection from an 
exponent of "the new discipline," and take 
refuge in the thought that "The people who 
seek to prove that things are not new are 
usually those who have not the smallest inten- 
tion of making use of them, whether new or 
old."^ 

While it is true that the outlook of analy- 
tical psychology does not invariably lead to 

^ The Child's Path to Freedom, by Norman MacMunn. 
G. Bell & Sons, Ltd., 1 921. p. 52. 

16 



Introductory 

new conclusions, it certainly leads to some 
which are sharply opposed to accepted 
theories, and educational methods have been 
heavily criticized from the standpoint of 
clinical psychology. In defence of the clinical 
psychologist's intrusion into educational ques- ' 
tions, it must be pointed out that he has to 
deal with many of the products of educa- 
tional failure: they constitute a more effective 
criticism than any he could invent. And if 
it is argued that the study of psycho-pathology 
unfits one for the understanding of normal 
types, it must be pointed out that while 
psychology remained with its attention fixed 
upon normal mental processes, it made no 
startling advance; and that the infusion of 
new life into it came from the medical psy- 
chologist's investigation of the phenomena of 
abnormality. 

We pass on to ask what it is that the new 
psychology has to ofifer to the teacher. What 
are they looking for — these people who flock 
to meetings on psycho-analysis, and invest in 
books on the new psychology? Some of them 
are unmistakably in search of a swift and 
magical solution of educational problems. 
The burden of their profession weighs heavily 
upon them, and the word has gone round that 
the new knowledge has an answer to all it& 

17 



The New Psychology aod the Teacher 

difficulties. This is of course a vain quest. 
There is no magical and external solution to 
such problems as confront the teacher, and 
no formula that will suddenly make him 
master of the intricacies of the child's mind. 

Some approach the new psychology mainly 
with the idea of analysing the children they 
teach. The writer is convinced that this 
should not be the purpose of its study. The 
analysis of the child and of the adolescent is 
the most delicate task that can be assayed. It 
is not required in the case of the normal child ; 
and the abnormal child should never be ex- 
posed to amateur analysis. There is a symbol 
which constantly occurs in dreams — the sym- 
bol of the tooth. It represents the individual's 
equipment for life, and especially his mental 
equipment, of which a small part is visible, 
and the greater part unseen and rooted in the 
unconscious. We may make use of it to em- 
phasize our present point. The child's teeth 
represent only a temporary adjustment to life, 
but the dentist knows that they need to be 
handled with extraordinary care; otherwise 
the permanent teeth that should follow will 
be impaired. The mental adjustment of the 
child or the adolescent needs to be treated with 
equal caution. 

The study of the unconscious mind may of 
i8 



Introductory 

course do much to quicken the teacher's power 
of observation and understanding of the child's 
mental processes; but even this is not the 
greatest service it can render. Its chief value 
lies, not in the direct light that it throws on 
the child, but in its application to the teacher's 
own psychology. It is like the indirect 
illumination used in microscope work: the 
light is not thrown on the object that is being 
studied, but upon a reflector, which needs ta 
be at the correct angle. The chief gain which 
the teacher may look for from his study of 
the subject is this kind of illumination of his 
own mind, a new power of self-knowledge 
which will give him a clearer sight and a 
greater freedom of action in helping the 
child. 

The test of the value of a study of analytical 
psychology lies in its ability to increase the 
teacher's power to give the child spiritual 
freedom. The Freudian School of Psycho- 
Analysis claims to have established the fact 
of a ''thorough-going determinism in the men- 
tal sphere." This is not the place to examine 
the evidence for this view. Let us grant that 
the sense of spontaneity in human life may be 
an illusion. If this is so, it is an illusion 
which the writer believes that all education- 
alists would do well to cherish very jealously. 

19 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

It seems to him an essential part of the equip- 
ment of the teacher or parent who sets out to 
make it possible for his children to attain to 
spiritual freedom. In working towards this' 
goal, the first service that analytical psychol- ; 
ogy can render is, as has been said, the freeing / 
of the teacher's own mental and emotional 
life from bias and repression. Furthermore, 
it can increase his power to help the child in 
three principal ways — in his adjustment to 
reality, in his adjustment to authority and to 
the herd, and in his sex education. 

The conception outlined above of the way 
in which analytical psychology can be of the 
greatest service to the teacher sets definite lim- 
its to the scope of this book. Its purpose is to 
answer some of the questions of those who are 
asking what is implied by the analytical 
standpoint towards oneself, and education, and 
life in general. The study of analytical psy- 
chology has clearly reached a point at which 
it has become part of the thought of educated 
people; and it is no longer possible, even if it 
were desirable, to regard it as the exclusive 
concern of specialists and their patients. Any 
one who speaks on this subject may be sure 
of applause if he remarks that a little knowl- 
edge is a dangerous thing. This is unques- 
tionably true of the new psychology; but it is 

20 



Introductory 

also true that a little vision is a great deal bet- 
ter than total blindness. Those whose busi- 
ness it is to study the development of the child 
should be least of all likely to confuse the little 
vision vs^ith the thorough understanding, or 
to underrate the intricacy of the process of 
analysis. This book offers no encouragement 
to its readers to assume the functions of the 
psycho-analysts. Nor is it intended to suggest 
that self-analysis has more than a limited 
value. When all is said, however, it is only a 
minority who will have the opportunity of 
being analyzed : the majority will have to cre- 
ate their own experience of analysis for them- 
selves. That experience, especially if it is a 
rather silent process, may be of great value. 
It will not be entirely pleasing to the individ- 
ual concerned, and those who are not serious 
will have no inducement to go far with it; for, 
unlike the more sociable and conversational 
methods of taking an interest in psycho-anal- 
ysis, it demands hard work and perseverance. 
It is with the idea of assisting some such expe- 
rience as this that the writer has accepted the 
responsibility of promoting "a little knowl- 
edge." 

One further point should be mentioned. 
The limits of the book have made it unavoid- 
able that some subjects should be touched upon 

21 



{ 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

with a misleading degree of simplicity. This 
is particularly true of the points at which 
references have been made to the therapeutic 
aspect of analytical psychology. For example, 
no mention whatever has been made to the 
principle of psycho-physical interaction and 
to the part played by the physical factor in 
neurosis. This omission is typical of others 
which are equally deliberate; but the attention 
of the reader should be drawn to the limita- 
tions in the scope of the book. 



22 



CHAPTER II 
AUTHORITY AND SUGGESTIBILITY 



Education : 

The two aspects. 

Their place in educational theories — 

The old regime. 

Froebel. 

Montessori. 
The goal of education. 
Urge to completeness. 

Suggestibility: ^ 

Suggestion defined and illustrated. 

Its function in childhood. 

Its use and abuse in the adult. 

The Child's Experience of Authority: 
The ultra-suggestible. 
The rebel. 

The unconscious motive for and against 
authority. 

The Teacher's Exercise of Authority: 

The unconscious motive for and against it. 

The instinct of patronage. 

The fear of being ousted. 

The potter and the clay. 

The use of analytical psychology. 

^ The term suggestibility is used throughout this chapter 
in the sense distinguished by Baudouin as acceptivity, v. 
Suggestion and Auto-suggestion, by Charles Baudouin. 
Geo. Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1920. 



AUTHORITY AND SUGGESTIBILITY 

THERE are roughly two aspects to edu- 
cation : the one, the transmission of racial 
experience; the other, the development of the 
individual psyche. Each makes a different 
demand upon the child; and, if the teacher is 
to get below the surface in his educational 
methods, it is essential that he should set him- 
self to realize the meaning of these demands 
that are made by himself or others, and also 
to understand the nature of the child's reac- 
tion to them. These two aspects of educa- 
tion, the presentation of authority and the 
presentation of reality, will be discussed in 
this and the following chapter. 

Before entering upon this discussion, some- 
thing must be said of the general nature of 
the educational process as it appears to-day. 
A very rough survey of the recent history of 
education is enough to show that even the 
effective recognition of the two-fold function 
of education is a notable advance. There 
still remain many traces of an era in which 
all the emphasis was laid on the transmission 
of learning and experience, the child be- 

25 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

ing at best but a passive recipient of these 
blessings. These were the days of enforced 
attention, when education was primarily a 
matter of discipline. The liberating influence 
of Froebel brought in a better era: the child's 
interest was no longer to be forced, but to be 
set free; and the most successful teacher was 
he who was most competent in stimulating 
the interest of the child. Since then, yet 
another revolutionary change has been taking 
place, and the old conception of discipline 
has undergone a fresh transformation. The 
experiments of Madame Montessori have re- 
vealed the amazing rapidity and the extraor- 
dinary ease with which a child who has been 
allowed his freedom in a suitable environment 
acquires the necessary knowledge with the 
minimum of restraint. These changes have 
redressed the balance in the conception of 
education. It is realized now that the de- 
velopment of the individual psyche is a 
far more important thing that the mere 
acquisition of knowledge; that the mediate 
experience which has been handed on to the 
child with such a gesture of beneficence is 
really far less time-saving, and far less val- 
uable than the immediate experience which 
he gains for himself, if he is put in an environ- 

26 



Authority and Suggestibility 

ment in which he can gain it fairly easily and 
fairly cheaply. 

The two aspects of education emphasize, 
respectively, interest, producing self-expres- 
sion; and attention, developing self-control. 
An educational system which is based upon 
the former principle amounts to a challenge 
to our whole outlook on the individual's life. 
It is useless to apply the theories of freedom 
and responsibility to the first years of a child's 
life and then to place him in an environment 
which demands of him first and foremost that 
he should submit to routine and drudgery. If 
a boy is to be sent to a public school with a 
perfectly rigid and stereotyped curriculum, 
and if he is afterwards to be drafted into the 
business or profession which has been chosen 
for him by his parents, it might well be ar- 
gued that his education should from the first 
be frankly dedicated to the object of control- 
ling his attention and ignoring his interest. 
But if there is any faith in the possibility of 
the child finding a career in which he can 
truly express himself, then it would appear 
equally logical and consistent to direct his 
education along lines that may possibly lead 
to a lesser capacity for drudgery, but an in- 
finitely greater power of self-expression, and 
a greater self to express. 

27 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

In contending that the primary emphasis in 
education should lie upon spontaneous inter- 
est, it is not necessary to underestimate the 
value of attention. The clinical psychologist 
has special opportunities of realizing the im- 
portance of this factor in the individual's 
equipment for life. Failure to develop ade- 
quate power of attentive control often mani- 
fests itself in later life in ill-health of body 
and mind, and it falls to the physician to cor- 
rect it as best he may by a process of re-educa- 
tion. The neurotic patient is often the victim 
of indecision : he cannot make up his mind on 
any subject; he has lost all will-power. The 
tendency in modern psychology is to make will 
and attention synonymous; and it is a tendency 
which is supported by the experience of psy- 
chotherapists. The temperament that is 
sometimes contemptuously dismissed as "neu- 
rotic" is often endowed with great gifts and 
capabilities, which have been allowed to run 
to waste for lack of the necessary training. 
Much can be done in later life by a careful 
technique of re-education; but the original 
failure in the early training of the faculties of 
attentive control has been responsible for 
much irretrievable loss both in individual 
happiness and social usefulness. 

In the light of these discoveriesi, how is the 
28 



Authority and Suggestibility 

goal of the child's development to be con- 
ceived? We may speak of it broadly as self- 
realization, using the term to include the com- 
plete adjustment of the individual to life in 
all its aspects. Towards this goal the child is 
impelled by an energy which is not derived 
from the influence of parents or teachers, or 
from any external source. The impulse to- 
wards growth is simply the primary biological 
urge to completeness which is found in every 
living thing. We come into the world with 
it, and it remains as the constant impulse to- 
wards a goal which is only attained when we 
reach maturity, and either express or sub- 
limate all our instinctive ambitions and poten- 
tialities. It is not primarily spiritual, but bio- 
logical, and it is largely unconscious. It fol- 
lows that a great deal of the child's growth, a 
great many of his ambitions and aspirations, 
are directed towards the primary, central and 
perfectly unconscious motive of ultimate par- 
enthood, because this is the essential biolog- 
ical expression of maturity. The human herd 
has become so complex and bewildering a 
thing that this great fact of parenthood, being 
the token and visible symbol of maturity, is 
largely obscured. Moreover, the human ideal 
of development is not purely biological, but 
has become enriched by ethical, social, and 

29 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

religious conceptions. In spite of this, the 
original, biological nature of the impulse to 
growth and to completeness is not to be 
ignored. 

It is evident that, though this principle of 
growth is universal, it is not irresistible. It 
is infinitely liable to hindrance and deviation! 
and delay at all points. The child's develop- 
ment towards completeness is very easily 
thwarted. If the urge to maturity is primar- 
ily biological, the barriers in its way seem to 
be almost invariably psychological; and for 
these barriers parents and teachers are com-, 
monly responsible. We put up a barrier when\ 
we restrain children unnecessarily; when we' 
put difficulties in the way of their self-expres- 
sion; when without reason we demand that 
they should inhibit interest and activity which 
seem to them to be perfectly harmless. This 
is the barrier of authority. The second barrier 
is raised when we offer to the child a world 
that is too harsh, too puzzling and too difficult 
for its powers of adjustment. This is the bar- 
rier of reality. These are the two great prob- 
lems for the child ; and the test of his achieve- 
ment is whether, when he reaches maturity, he 
has made the three great practical adjustments 
that life demands: the adjustment to society; 
the adjustment to the mate (actual or poten- 

30 



Authority and Suggestibility 

tial) ; and the adjustment to the Infinite. Fail- 
ure at either of these points speaks of hindered 
development and the falling-short of complete 
self-realization. 

The conception of education that has been 
outlined above is one that underlies the studies 
in this book. For the sake of clearness it 
seemed well to state it at the outset, though 
in a somewhat brief and dogmatic form. It 
is hoped that the rest of the book explains 
and amplifies it, and gives to the reader op- 
portunities of criticizing it in a more detailed 
form. 

Returning to the two aspects of education 
— the transmission of racial experience and 
the development of the individual psyche — 
we find that there are two characteristics of 
childhood that demand special study: the first 
is suggestibility, and the second is phantasy. 
Both have a genetic value; both are associated 
with development; and both, like the thymus 
gland, should entirely, or to a great extent, 
vanish by the time that the individual reaches 
maturity. Both tend to persist, and their per- 
sistence spells discord and inefficiency in the 
adult. This can generally be traced to some 
failure in the environment or upbringing of 
the individual; and since the teacher may be 
responsible for this, he needs to understand 

31 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

the function of these two characteristics. The 
present chapter deals with the first — sugges- 
tibility, which is concerned with the child's 
reaction to authority. 

Suggestibility"^ may be defined as the attain- 
ment of a state of mind or the execution of an 
act upon an inadequate rational basis. It is, in I 
other words, blind acceptance of authority inl 
any form. We speak of the suggestibility of 
primitive peoples ; but a more obvious instance 
is our own susceptibility to the power of ad- 
vertisement. The whole function of the ad- 
vertisement manager, the salesman and the 
auctioneer, is to exploit the tendency to buy 
goods upon an inadequate rational basis. 
Equally obvious is the suggestibility of read- 
ers of the daily press, who accept opinions on 
politics, religion, art, or amusement, with 
the minimum of independent investigation. 
Nevertheless, in so far as we are mature, we 
suppose ourselves to have attained to the 
power of independent judgment, and to be no 
longer exposed to the abuses of suggestibility. 
There are some who are so much alive to these 
dangers that they would try to demand, even 
from the child, that his thought and action 
should be founded entirely upon a consciously 
rational basis. In so doing, they ignore an 

^ V. supra, p. 24, note.' 
32 



Authority and Suggestibility 

important psychological distinction between 
the child and the adult. If the child is in- 
fluenced by the injunction that he shall wait 
until the 'bus stops before dismounting, he is 
manifesting a degree of suggestibility that is 
entirely advantageous both to himself and to 
the community. Suggestibility in the child 
has a genetic value, which lies in the possi- 
'bility of transmitting rapidly to a child a great 
amount of racial experience, while he is still 
incapable of fully apprehending the rational 
basis of it. It is the substitution of mediate 
for immediate experience. We save him from 
breaking his neck by remembering our own 
early experiments in falling off a 'bus, and all 
the later considerations which have taught us 
to seek safety first. We cannot expect the 
child to apprehend the significance of the law 
of the conservation of energy, or any other 
restraining thought, when he is solely engaged 
with the idea of leaving the 'bus at the point 
nearest to the Zoo. Neither can we expect the 
child to take into consideration the demands 
of the herd. If he goes from the dining-room 
to the nursery, his one preoccupation is to get 
there. He sees no reason to waste time in 
stopping to shut the door; he has no objection 
to open doors: why should grown-ups? We 
rightly make use of suggestion to claim from 

33 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

the child a compliance with the demands of 
the herd, for which he can realize no adequate 
reason. The two facts in the child's position 
which demand the use of suggestion are, there- 
fore, first, his inexperience of causal relations; 
and secondly, his inability to apprehend the 
claims of the community. Neither of these 
conditions should apply to the adult, but there 
are some who, in the latter respect, remain 
children all their lives. They prate about the 
liberty of the individual ; they whine over the 
income-tax; they fail at every point to visual- 
ize the reciprocal obligation of the unit and 
the herd. Most adults get past this stage of 
development, and grasp the collective aim of 
society. But it is only a minority that gets 
beyond that, to the parental view, which im- 
plies the readiness to sacrifice self-interest, not 
only for the social demands of this generation, 
but also, and still more so, for those of the 
next. Thus the child has to pass from an indi- 
vidual aim in life to a collective aim. But his 
judgment undergoes the reverse transforma- 
tion : he begins by being subject to the opinion 
of the elders who constitute his environ- 
ment; gradually this subjection should give 
way to an individual judgment in all matters 
that are vital. If we set ourselves primarily 
to fashion his conduct, we shall abuse his sug- 

34 



Authority and Suggestibility 

gestibility, and stunt the growth of his dis- 
crimination; if we ignore behaviour, and deal 
exclusively with his reason, we shall waste 
much precious time, risk many disasters, and 
produce a citizen of doubtful value. It must 
be our aim, therefore, to bring up children so 
that they respect all racial experience, and at 
the same time learn, in due course, to challenge 
all authority. Authority must not be regarded 
as ultimately binding, nor must it be disre- 
garded without respectful consideration. 

The destiny of the child is social efficiency; 
the problem of the child is psychical freedom; 
the obstacle to the child is authority; and the 
test of every child's development is his final 
attitude towards racial experience. 

The progress of the child towards this goal 
may be roughly represented in a diagram. The 

ffJtra SuqgestWe 



SolF reaf/SBf/on 
soc/a/ e/yyc/e/icy 




febel 



child starts from O on his journey, and at A 
meets the gate of authority. If that gate is 

35 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

open, he passes straight on towards his goal. 
If it be shut, or insufficiently open, and he 
fails to pass through, his path deviates in one 
or two directions : either he becomes ultra-sug- 
gestible, and continues to accept authority in a 
childish way, or else he becomes the heretic, 
who rebels, with an equal failure of individual 
judgment, against all forms of authority. 
Whichever of these alternatives result from 
the clash with authority, the individual sets 
himself to weave a myth, the strands of which 
are inextricably mingled with his every 
thought and action. He cannot accept the 
truth involved in his situation, and therefore 
he has to explain away to himself his tendency 
to react too much or too little to authority. 
He has to satisfy himself that his undue plas- 
ticity in the face of authority is not what it 
seems, but a rational attitude; or that his un- 
due resistance to every form of authority is 
based on the superiority of his own judgment. 
These two types — the ultra-suggestible and 
the rebel — must be perfectly familiar to every 
observer of human nature. The ultra-sug- 
gestible responds inevitably to the opinion of 
the majority, and to the ruling of fashion 
which is accepted by the group in which he 
moves. He may be led thus to become a sup- 
porter of the Established Church, and a rep- 

36 



Authority and Suggestibility 

resentative of political and social decorum. 
This is perhaps his natural home, for he is 
conscious of the support of a large body of 
opinion among his fellow-countrymen. But 
people whose lot is cast among minorities and 
heresies may be equally influenced by sug- 
gestion to embrace these opinions. They re- 
spond to the dominant authority in their im- 
mediate surroundings, and become free-think- 
ers and revolutionaries from sheer orthodoxy. 
When they come in contact with a wider circle 
their views may change, and they may find 
what seems to them an irresistible inner con- 
viction leading them to the stronghold of a 
more general orthodoxy. Behind the variation 
of their opinions lies the constant psycholog- 
ical factor of suggestibility. The reverse 
process is seen in the individual whose reac- 
tion to authority has taken the form of the 
rebel tendency. He carries with him an in- 
ward resistance to all authority as such; he 
must always be " agin' the Government," no 
matter what measure is under discussion. 
Minorities and lost causes are his special de- 
partment. In all circumstances of life his ear 
is unnaturally quick to catch the Tyrant-Rebel 
motif. He plays many parts; and perhaps his 
greatest is that of Prometheus. Defiance on 
behalf of the whole human race in the face of 

Z7 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

divine oppression is heresy on the grand scale. 

It is clear enough that both these tendencies 
contain elements that are essential to the com- 
munity. Kvcn in their cruder forms they may 
be useful instruments; and they may be trans- 
formed into motives of direct service. Our 
immediate concern, however, is to point to 
their development as a product of the unwise 
use of authority, and to show how they inval- 
idate judgment. The person who has been 
diverted from the normal path as regards his 
attitude to authority is likely to fall short of 
the full attainment of self-realization and so- 
cial efficiency. His judgments and his actions 
cannot be accepted at their surface value: too 
much allowance has to be made for emotional 
bias. Suggestion may be used to enforce very 
admirable opinions; but the person who has 
acquired them by this process holds them in 
a precarious and unsatisfactory way. Judg- 
ments that are made in virtue of the heresy 
tendency are equally the product of a second- 
rate mental mechanism. 

It is probable that no one can read an ac- 
count of the two types without feeling a slight 
bias towards one or the other: a faint suspi- 
cion that the writer has been a little hard on 
one type, or has let one down rather lightly; 
a passing reflection that at least it is better that 

38 



Authority and Suggestibility 

a child should be over-sensitive to national 
tradition than that he should be indifferent or 
hostile towards it; or perhaps a slight emo- 
tional reaction to the idea of Prometheus. In 
so far as this is true, our own judgment is 
likely to be at fault. 

We have been considering the effect upon 
the child of his experience of authority. It 
leads to the consideration of unconscious 
motives in adult life, and we find ourselves 
asking, not only what opinions a person holds, 
but also why he holds them. The same method 
must be applied in considering education from 
the point of view of the teacher. What meth- 
ods do we believe in; and why do we believe 
in them? In so far as wc are biased towards 
heresy, we shall always be attracted by the 
new method, especially when it is most 
strongly opposed to the old (unless we are 
working under an authority so progressive 
that it becomes necessary to develop a heresy 
of reaction). It would appear a very simple 
matter to detect this or the opposite tendency; 
but it is to be remembered that what appears 
from without as bias, prejudice and bigotry, 
appears from within as rational and well- 
founded conviction. If it is a simple matter 
of good will and intention, how shall one ac- 
count for the failures of education : the chil- 

39 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

dren who grow up with a permanent inability 
for an unbiased attitude towards authority? 
The keepers of the gate of authority need the 
clearest insight into their own motives if they 
are to discharge their duty fairly. The teach- 
er's own experience of authority may be the 
source of his strongest bias; but there are 
many others. The snare of patronage is al- 
ways a danger to the grown-up. We enjoy 
being in a position to patronize the young, 
and in so doing believe that we are adopting 
the true parental attitude towards them. That 
this is the attitude of many parents is only too 
obvious; but it is the negation of the true 
parental outlook, because it refuses the child 
the essential condition of growth, namely 
freedom. The snare of jealousy is no less real 
a danger — that jealousy of the old towards the 
young which is seen in every gregarious spe- 
cies. The old wolf has enjoyed the mastery 
of the pack, but when he begins to feel his 
teeth getting loose he realizes that his days 
of mastery, and therefore of life, are num- 
bered; and he develops an inordinate desire to 
crush the rival whom he has hitherto regarded 
merely as a junior. Such an idea is so far 
out of keeping with our conception of our- 
selves as educators that it may seem a remote 
and unreal danger: that is to say^ it is more 

40 



Authority and Suggestibility 

likely to be an unconscious than a conscious 
motive. As such, it may exert an unsuspected 
influence on conduct. 

There is another tendency which leads the 
teacher to the wrong use of authority: and 
that is the instinct of the potter to mould the 
clay according to his heart's desire; to be con- 
cerned primarily with the result, and to ignore 
the process whereby it is achieved. The use 
of suggestion in medicine throws some light 
at this point upon its use in education. The 
clinical psychologist can often achieve star- 
tling results by suggestive therapeutics; and in 
a certain amount of perfectly ethical medical 
work this means is rightly employed. There 
are nervous conditions in children and in old 
people for which this is the most suitable form 
of treatment. There are cases — certain drug 
addictions, for example — in which it is of 
great value in breaking the force of physical 
and mental habit, as a preliminary to cure. 
But the power to achieve results is not in itself 
justification for the choice of this method. It 
is one that makes use of an infantile com- 
ponent in the patient's mental make-up, and 
therefore tends to emphasize a characteristic 
which ought no longer to be exerting an active 
influence upon his adult life. In like manner, 
the educator may obtain great results by mak- 

41 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

ing use of the child's suggestibility. The be- 
haviour, conduct and outward bearing of the 
child may be extraordinarily altered and dig- 
nified by the use of authority. Up to a certain 
point this is necessary and desirable; but if, 
as a result, the child is becoming permanently 
suggestible, or if the teacher is sowing the 
seeds of heresy and rebellion, then he is paying 
too high a price for the apparent improve- 
ment in behaviour, and he needs to resist the 
temptation to work for rapid results, just as 
the doctor needs to be on his guard against 
trading on the suggestibility of the patient to 
produce a rapid cure. 

And, finally, as he grows older, the teacher's 
exercise of authority may become marked by 
that complacent rigidity which is of the es- 
sence of reaction. The school master of this 
type will cheerfully crush and mangle the 
character of a dull boy in forcing him through 
a public school entrance or responsions, be- 
cause he knows nothing of education but Eton 
and Balliol, and because he is too blind to see 
that in the unequal contest self-realization is 
being made impossible. 

It will be said that there is no need of a new 
psychology to discover that there are mis- 
guided teachers who fall into all these obvious 
perils in the use of authority, and the abuse 

42 



Authority and Suggestibility 

of the child's suggestibility. This is true; but 
the reason why it is considered relevant to 
enumerate them here is that the new psychol- 
ogy has cast a fresh, and rather a lurid, light 
on the results of these mistakes. The clinical 
psychologist is confronted with the victim of 
educational failure, and learns the story of 
thwarted development and misdirected growth 
which lies behind his disability. The study 
of these cases need not blind him to the vast 
number of children who have passed safely 
along the road towards self-realization; but 
it is does point to the existence of a consid- 
erable body of men and women who have been 
unnecessarily hindered in their development. 
And it also suggests that the barriers in their 
path have not as a rule been erected by ex- 
ceptionally malevolent or discreditable edu- 
cationalists : quite the contrary. It is believed, 
therefore, that an acquaintance with the 
methods and the findings of analytical psy- 
chology will help the teacher both to under- 
stand the m.ental processes of the child, and 
to avoid some of those dangers of unconscious 
bias and prejudice in himself that are some- 
times at work in contradiction to his conscious 
purpose. 



43 



CHAPTER III 
REALITY AND PHANTASY 



The Nature of Phantasy. 

Compensatory Phantasy: 

Normal. 

Abnormal. 

Relation between the two. 

The child and the adult. 

Inspiratory Phantasy: 

The attempt to transcend present knowledge 

and experience. 
The pragmatic tests: relation to reality — 

progressive or regressive. 

Creative Phantasy: 

Practical and artistic. 
The test of social value. 

Social Phantasy: 

Its apparent "objectivity." 
Its relation to reality. 

"Developing the Child's Imagination": 
Protest against the shibboleth. 
Fairy tales, good and bad. 
The mythology of the unconscious. 

Phantasy or Reality: 
Peter Pan. 



REALITY AND PHANTASY 

^TT^HE last chapter was concerned with the 
-■■ struggle of the developing child in rela- 
tion to the authority-independence principle. 
We pass from that to consider the phantasy- 
reality principle, which involves a struggle of 
comparable importance. Phantasy, like sug- 
gestibility, is a characteristic of childhood: 
both tendencies have their racial value; both 
must be to a great extent discarded before the 
individual can be said to have reached matur- 
ity; both are primary factors in educability, , 
and both are capable of abuse by educators^i 
Phantasy is like an air-cushion: there is 
nothing in it, but it eases the joints wonder- 
fully. It is the magic that tempers the winds 
of reality to the shorn lamb. It smooths the 
path of the child's adjustment to reality; and 
when that reality offers too menacing an as- 
pect, it provides a way of escape. It may be 
stimulated from within, and find expression 
in day-dreams, castles in the air, and in all 
forms of imagining and pretending; or it may 
be stimulated from without by fairy-tales, 
legends, fables, myths and allegories. All 

47 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

these are of the stuff of phantasy. What part 
should they play in the life of the child? And 
how far must they be discarded by the adult? 
In order to answer these questions, it is neces- 
sary to distinguish various forms of phantasy. 
The first, and by far the most common, is 
the compensatory phantasy. In the child, it 
is, in moderation, a perfectly normal response 
to the harshness, rigidity or monotony of real 
life. The weak little boy has day-dreams in 
which he performs incredible feats of strength 
and valour. The little girl, who has been told 
that she is ugly, pictures herself as a princess 
of transcendent beauty. Sorhetimes the phan- 
tasy takes the form of an elaborate story or 
mental picture; sometimes it is merely a pass- 
ing wish. The latter form is faithfully illus- 
trated in Miss Fyleman's verses: 

I wish I liked rice pudding; 
I wish I were a twin ; 
I wish some day a real live fairy 
Would just come walking in. 

I wish when I'm at table 

My feet would touch the floor; 

I wish our pipes would burst next winter, 

Just like they did next door. 

I wish that I could whistle 
Real proper grown-up tunes; 

48 



Reality and Phantasy 

I wish they'd let me sweep the chimnejrs 
On rainy afternoons. 

I've got such heaps of wishes, 

I've only said a few: 

I wish that I could wake some morning 

And find they'd all come true! 

These lines, written with astonishing insight 
into the child's mind, show how harmless, nat- 
ural and disarming is the normal phantasy of 
childhood, and how obvious is the compen- 
satory mechanism at work. But, while the 
phantasy tendency is perfectly normal in the 
child, it is not so in the adult. For him it is 
a regression ; and he should no longer maintain 
the hal)it of obtaining satisfaction by picturing 
himself, his circumstances, or his destiny, in 
a way that bears no relation to reality. It is, 
therefore, part of the normal process of devel- 
opment that the phantasy tendency should 
gradually diminish in exactly the same way 
as the tendency to suggestibility should dimin- 
ish. The failure of this process may be seen 
in an example taken from the abnormal. 

The phantasy takes the form of a letter, 
written by a boy of fourteen — the only child 
of a widow, who was also a Christian Scientist. 
His mother believed him to be the most won- 
derful boy in the world, and taught him to 

49 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

share her belief. She kept him at home until 
he was fourteen. At that age he was sent to 
a boarding-school, and to his surprise found 
himself in the bottom class, the bottom game, 
and in every way in a position of acute in- 
feriority. The sympathy that he might have 
gained in these circumstances was continually 
being alienated by his own reaction to them: 
a smile of bland and imperturbable superior- 
ity. He was unable to adjust himself to the 
hard and humbling realities of school life. 
When he had been at school some months the 
following letter was found written by him : 

"Dear Sir or Madam, — 

"I am a member of School. I have a friend 

here who has a great belief in a strange yet wonderful 
theory, which he believes has been told him by the great 
Author and Giver of all things, namely God. 

"The theory which I am going to set forth before you 
in the following pages (as he told it to me in the first 
person I will write it so) is open for your free personal 
criticisms, which should kindly be addressed to me at the 
above address. 

"I feel that I ought to make mention of the fact that 
my friend has never told anybody in the world of the 
theory before, and has been expecting it to happen to 
him each day for the last six years or so, so that nothing 
can remove it; there it is set out as he told it to me. 

"I have been expecting for many years to become the 
most wonderful man upon this earth — in fact, you can 
hardly say upon this earth, exactly, as I shall be immortal. 

50 



Reality and Phantasy 

"I shall have magic lifts, which will run between 
heaven and earth. Heaven will be my native land, and 
I shall be sort of let into Heaven by the back door, so 
to speak. That is to say that I expect I shall not be 
like an ordinary human being, but if God will give me 
all these things, I will pay Him back by doing the work 
set forth by my Father to my utmost capability. To 
continue, my work will mainly consist in schoolmaster- 
ing and as a doctor. 

"I shall have an absolutely new and perfect immortal 
body, which can be suited to either climates. It will 
also be controlled by electricity throughout, controlled 
by switches fastened in my body, enabling me to have 
(i) strength to give the most collosal kick known; (2) 
to make myself invisible; (3) to fly through the air. 

"I shall know all that is known, or ever will be known, 
including all the languages of the world. 

"I shall have a brother, who will be born artd bred in 
Heaven, so to speak. 

"I shall also have an extremely wonderful motor-car, 
which will be able to speak, but very shy. 

"I shall have as much money as I want, my allowance 
being £1 per day, or £6 105. per week. 

"I can imagine myself in this other life of which I 
have told you about. Of course, no human being will 
be allowed to enter Heaven during his lifetime, except 
to go into the Healing-Room. The fare, which go to the 
Heaven Lift Company (the pov/er station of which will 
be in the Upper World), will be sd. I can also imagine 
myself doing many things in this other life, for instance, 
counting the money at the end of the day in the lift, 
and taking it to the bank. 

"I presume that I shall wake up in Heaven one 
morning in a sort of motor-car bed, in the sunshine of 

51 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

this new world, and can imagine running about the town 
in this car." 

This document obviously exceeds the limits 
of normal phantasy, but it illustrates exactly 
the same compensatory tendency in an exag- 
gerated form. The boy identifies himself with 
a friend, who is in the confidence of the Al- 
mighty, and therefore in a position of supreme 
privilege and superiority. He is the most 
wonderful man upon earth: here is compensa- 
tion for being the least-regarded boy in the 
whole school. He was lazy; and the need for 
exertion, physical or mental, was another of 
the hard realities of life which he was unable 
to face. Therefore his phantasy is full of 
magical solutions. 

There is the lift — a familiar dream-symbol 
of effortless achievement. A woman of thirty- 
two, who had been brought up by two mis- 
guided and adoring parents, and had been un- 
able to develop self-reliance and individuality, 
once had a dream that she was staying in an 
hotel; that she walked upstairs to her parents' 
room, and that they were angry with her for 
not having asked for the lift. It was true: 
their policy had always been to save her effort. 

Again, electricity plays an important part 
in the phantasy. To every modern child who 

52 



Reality and Phantasy 

is familiar with electric light and power the 
electric switch is the natural symbol for the 
greatest result with the least exertion. By 
merely turning on the switch this boy was to 
be enabled to give the most colossal kick 
known; to become invisible, and to fly through 
the air. It needs but little imagination to call 
up the scenes to which these powers are com- 
pensatory: the times when he had been kicked 
by other boys, or chased round the playground, 
with good reason for wishing to become in- 
visible. Flying through the. air is a common 
and significant symbol of phantasy itself: the 
escape from the terra firma of reality. Com- 
pensation for stupidity at lessons is found in 
the phantasy of knowing all that is known or 
ever will be known. The boy longed to escape 
from his schoolfellows, but none the less, he 
was lonely; and his longing for fellowship 
finds expression in the idea of a "brother in 
Heaven" — the ideal companion who would 
make no exacting demands upon him. The 
motor-car symbolizes progress without effort; 
and the conception of the motor-car bed raises 
the symbol to a higher power of ease. 

The phantasy can be related at every point 
to the boy's life, but at every point it is a with- 
drawal and a retreat from reality. It repre- 
sents the phantasy tendency, no longer in its 

53 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

normal function of easing the child's adjust- 
ment to reality, but in an acutely morbid form. 
And yet it is not so far removed from mental 
processes which are accepted as normal. Its 
main idea of effortless salvation, the indi- 
vidual's demand for preferential treatment, is 
not an uncommon thought, though it seldom 
expresses itself so ingenuously as in the aspira- 
tion to be " let into Heaven by the back door, 
so to speak." The choice of the occupations 
of the school master and the doctor is clearly 
determined by the idea that these are the two 
most patronizing professions: a sobering 
thought both for the readers of this book and 
for its writer. Again, it is impossible not to 
relate to the situation the fact of the boy's 
upbringing as a Christian Scientist; for Chris- 
tian Science is to a large extent based on a 
phantasy of health, which is a retreat from 
reality. The sufferer refuses to accept the 
fact that he has toothache, and describes it as 
a "false claim," thereby making use of this 
same principle of attempting to twist reality 
into a congenial form, rather than adapt one- 
self to its uncongenial elements. 

During the war there were many people 
who refused to accept the circumstantial evi- 
dence of the death of a son or husband. A 
widow, wearing deep mourning, admitted to 

54 



Reality and Phantasy 

the writer that she was convinced that her hus- 
band was not dead, despite the fact that he had 
been missing for two years, and that after nine 
months he had been — in the official language 
— "presumed dead." Her "conviction" was 
clearly a compensatory phantasy, protecting 
her from the conscious realization of her loss. 
It might appear that in such circumstances 
the adult, no less than the child, is entitled to 
protection from the keen winds of reality, and 
that we should accept as a merciful dispensa- 
tion the mental mechanism which makes pos- 
sible a temporary escape from the intolerable 
fact. But this view becomes impossible when 
the effect of compensatory phantasy in the life 
of the adult is more closely examined. In so 
far as it is successfully indulged in, it means 
loss of contact with the reality of outward 
experience : and that way neurosis lies. And 
it destroys the unity of the inner life by setting 
Up a contradiction between the conscious and 
the unconscious, for while the individual be- 
lieves in his phantasy, he is repressing his own 
apprehension of the obvious reality. At this 
price the consolations of phantasy are too 
dearly bought. The study of these considera- 
tions points to the view which has already been 
stated — that the function of compensatory 
phantasy is genetic : it has a special part to 

55 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

play in childhood, and it should diminish, 
almost to the point of disappearance, in the 
progress to maturity. 

Although the factor of compensation plays 
so prominent a part in the phantasies both of 
the child and of the adult, it is not always the 
chief factor. One motive of phantasy is the 
attempt to transcend the limits of present 
knowledge or experience. Unsatisfied curi- 
osity is responsible for much phantasy-weav- 
ing. A child who travelled between Australia 
and England several times kept asking her 
parents what life was like at the bottom of the 
sea. As they never gave her a satisfactory 
answer she developed the most elaborate phan- 
tasies. A small boy was sure that the Holy 
Ghost was a huge gasometer. All children 
will weave sexual phantasies, so long as they 
are kept ignorant or deceived on these sub- 
jects. Mental activity of this type is the raw 
material of the speculative tendency, where it 
seeks to push knowledge to its farthest limits. 
Many of the discoveries and inventions of sci- 1 
ence seem to have gained their first footing in' 
the minds of men in the form of phantasies, 
and to have held it precariously until practical 
reason had caught up imagination, and said 
that truth was stranger than fiction, and that 
Icarus could fly in broad daylight without 

S6 



Reality and Phantasy 

having his wings melted. Many of the great 
myths of the world are an attempt to satisfy 
the longing for knowledge on things that are 
beyond present possible experience — the be- 
ginning and the end of all things, or the origin 
of evil. And there are ethical and social ideals, 
which can be seen to be true to the principles 
of human development, and yet appear so far 
remote from present experience that, until 
they can be embodied and expressed, they re- 
main almost in the realm of phantasy. Adult 
life is the antithesis of the nursery in many 
respects, but it resembles it in this: that it is 
still a narrow territory of familiar things on 
the edge of a great expanse of unknown coun- 
try. The phantasy tendency, therefore, in so 
far as it is the impulse of discovery and as- 
piration, is part of the equipment of the 
grown-up no less than of the child. Pro- 
gressive phantasy is an essential pre-occupa- 
tion with those who are seeking to "poise the 
world upon a distant centre." 

It is easy to generalize upon the idea that 
dreaming and doing are not necessarily op- 
posed; but it is necessary also to have some 
standard of the right and wrong exercise of 
phantasy. No doubt this raises the metaphys- 
ical problem: "What is Reality? " but, pend- 
ing the solution of this problem, one may sug- 

57 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

gest certain comparatively simple pragmatic 
tests. The value of the phantasy tendency de- 
pends, first, on the closeness of its relation to 
actual life. For example, a youth who is on 
active service may have his mind full of a 
V.C. phantasy; and this may have a very stim- 
ulating effect on his immediate conduct. But 
the same phantasy, obsessing the mind of his 
small brother at school, may hinder, rather 
than help, him in his efforts to master the 
binomial problem for the purposes of Wool- 
wich entrance. 

Another test is to be found in the distinc- 
tion between progressive and regressive phan- 
tasy. The child's dreams and imaginings may 
seem absurdly remote from his present exist- 
ence, and yet have a bearing upon his future. 
The adult's phantasies are likely to be directed 
to the past. Sometimes it is his own actual past 
that he dwells upon and idealizes, until "it 
would seem that the recollection of his youth 
is more precious to him than any present 
joys." ^ Sometimes it is the return in imagina- 
tion to a condition which should be psycho- 
logically past, since it belongs to an earlier 
phase of development. "It is ever so in life, 
when we draw back before too great an ob- 

^ Analytical Psychology, by Dr. C. G. Jung, BailHere, 
Tindall & Cox, 191 7. p. 164. ' 

58 



Reality and Phantasy 

stacle — the menace of some severe disappoint- 
ment, or the risk of some far-reaching decision 
—the energy stored up for the solution of the 
task flows back impotent; the by-streams once 
relinquished as inadequate are again filled 
up."^ The conception of regression is of im- 
mense importance in the understanding and 
treatment of mental and nervous disorders; 
and the retreat into phantasy is one of its char- 
acteristic phenomena. 

There is a third aspect of phantasy: that 
which includes all invention, all art, and every 
work of the creative imagination. This is un- 
questionably to be encouraged in the child. 
It is good that he should draw, plan, devise, 
and make anything and everything, and that 
he should explore the ways of self-expression. 
In the adolescent and the adult a more rigid 
standard needs to be applied. There are 
many products of phantasy which their au- 
thors would fain justify as "creative," which 
are, in reality, mainly compensatory: stories, 
for example, in which the hero seeks satisfac- 
tion for his own disappointments by identify- 
ing himself with the achievements of the hero. 
And there is much "self-expression" which 
is of no conceivable value to the community. 
The schoolboy who writes sonnets in pref- 

^ Ibid., p. 156. 

59 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

erence to doing his trigonometry may, of 
course, be a potential Rupert Brooke: but he 
may be simply a young slacker. Education in 
the past has not been free from the reproach 
of rigidity and inability to apply exceptional 
methods to exceptional individuals; and we 
are therefore likely to be influenced to-day 
by a bias in the opposite direction. We are 
inclined to believe in self-expression as a thing 
that is necessarily valuable, and to be encour- 
aged without discrimination. This view is 
obviously incomplete without the reservation 
that there are times, and perhaps many times, 
when the young person — much more the ado- 
lescent than the child — must, for the good of 
society and of his own soul, leave self-expres- 
sion aside for the moment, and learn self-dis- 
cipline. The discussion of the social value of 
creative phantasy raises many issues which 
lie beyond the realm of psychology, and there- 
fore beyond the scope of this book. 

Hitherto we have been chiefly considering 
the phantasy tendency in the individual: the 
same mental mechanism can be seen at work 
in the community. Reference has already 
been made to the element of phantasy in 
Christian Science: the refusal to admit the 
reality of pain. We may attach a high value 
to this belief; but it is none the less important 

60 



Reality and Phantasy 

to recognize the nature of the psychological 
process involved. Social phantasy comes to 
the normal individual with a far greater au- 
thority than is attached to his own private 
phantasies. He is inclined to believe that 
reality is something "objective"; and that the 
test of a thing's objectivity is that other people 
should experience it too. He makes due al- 
lowance for his own capacity for illusion; but 
when large numbers of other people accept a 
theory it becomes something outside himself, 
and carries the credential of "objectivity." It 
may be remembered that there was once a con- 
troversy among the evening newspapers as to 
which had the largest circulation. It was car- 
ried on with great intensity and warmth : chal- 
lenges were flung down; claims were made; 
statistics were demanded. The Press is al- 
ways a good field for observing the play of 
primitive instincts; and the emotional re- 
sponse to this stimulus was no doubt related 
to the instincts of self-preservation. But the 
particular importance of the question of cir- 
culation was not merely one of numbers but 
of authority. Social phantasy — rumour — is 
part of the legitimate stock-in-trade of the 
evening newspapers (seeing that it can always 
be contradicted in the morning) ; and the more 
people there are reading the rumour the more 

6i 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

conviction it carries to each one. A special 
sanctity is attached to anything that is read 
by more than a million people on one day. 

If the social phantasy is to commend itself 
to belief, it has to pass another of the tests 
of reality which we commonly employ: it has 
to appear in some sort of harmony with the 
rest of experience. All rumour is intimately 
related to experience; but it is the kind of 
relation which existed between the extrava- 
gant phantasy of the schoolboy and the reali- 
ties of his life at school. If we were to apply 
the test rigidly and impartially, there would 
be many rumours that could never pass 
through the gate. As it is, they fly over it. 
Rumour springs from a need that confounds 
judgment: "defeating the conscious aim to 
express objective truth by the unconscious aim 
to express subjective emotion." ^ We can see 
this mechanism at work in any social phan- 
tasy. It is clearly illustrated in the most 
striking example of our own times — the Rus- 
sian rumour of September, 1914. It stands 
out as evidence of the tragic and pathetic need 
that was felt in those days. We were up 
against a reality more terrible and menacing 
than any we had known, and we took refuge 

1 M. K. Bradby: The Logic of the Unconscious Mind, 
Oxford Medical Publications, p. 60. 

62 



Reality and Phantasy 

from it in a great phantasy of deliverance, for 
which there was not a single scrap of veri- 
fiable evidence. 

Some of the most vivid and intense forms of 
social phantasy are of the compensatory type; 
butexamples of the other types will also occur 
to the reader. The idea of the League of 
Nations has long been in the world as an in- 
spiratory phantasy. To-day, though it has a 
local habitation and a Covenant, its friends as 
well as its enemies protest that *'it is a mere 
ghost that walks the earth.'* Whether or no 
one believes in such ghosts, and in the power 
of things that are not to bring to naught things 
that are, must depend upon one's view of the 
nature of reality. 

This discussion of phantasy must be related 
to the general view of the educationalist on 
the advisability of "developing the child's 
imagination." There is some difference of 
opinion on this point. Dr. Montessori has 
assumed a somewhat uncompromising attitude 
with regard to the fairy tale, and its place 
in education; and her attitude has been sub- 
jected to a good deal of criticism. There is 
probably an element of truth in the objection 
that Dr. Montessori comes from a Latin race, 
and does not fully appreciate the value of 
folk-lore to a Saxon, Teutonic or Scandina- 

63 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

vian people. It is certainly true that as Chris- 
tianity dominated the Latin races first, it sup- 
pressed to a great extent the evolution of folk- 
lore in its original form; so that these races 
are much poorer in legend and myth than the 
more Northern races. The racial phantasy 
was largely absorbed in religious allegory and 
hagiology. It may also be said that the North- 
ern races have, on the whole, less facility for 
self-expression; and, therefore, more emphasis 
is needed in their education on all that tends 
to encourage it. But, with these reservations, 
one must accept the large measure of truth in 
Dr. Montessori's position. Her objection is, 
no doubt, based partly on the worthlessness, 
fatuity or harmfulness of many of the fairy 
stories in currency. There is need for a pro- 
test against the mere shibboleth of "develop- 
ing the child's imagination." The phantasy 
tendency is inherent in every child; but its 
development is not necessarily valuable. The 
policy of "developing the imagination" may 
produce an Edison or a hypochondriac. Every 
form of stimulus to the imagination, whether 
it be the kinema, or phantasy, or fairy tales, 
needs to be judged on its own merits. The 
value or the harm of it entirely depends on 
the kind of picture the child sees, and the kind 
of story he hears or makes up- for himself. 

-64 



Reality and Phantasy 

No one can doubt that fairy tales, myths and 
allegories serve the purpose of objectifying 
the abstract, so as to bring it within the grasp 
of the child : he must pass thus from the seen 
to the unseen, from the known to the unknown. 
They are invaluable forms of expression; but 
what is it that they express? And how much 
of this meaning does the child understand? 

The story of Little Red Riding-hood is a 
very interesting one from the point of view of 
racial psychology. It appears in the folk-lore 
of every country from Persia to Norway, and 
it contains a deep psychological truth. Its 
theme is the age-long story of the conflict 
between the aspiring child and the doomed 
adult; between confident vision and consum- 
ing jealousy. All that the old grandmother 
stood for of love and devotion has been con- 
sumed in the bitterness of becoming a "back 
number." Then there is a magical interven- 
tion : the man appears and saves the girl. Most 
of us have known the girl confronted with this 
danger, and we have seen that sometimes the 
man does appear and save her, and that some- 
times he does not, and she is destroyed by the 
fierceness of bitter and exacting age. It is a 
story full of meaning; but is it a meaning that 
we wish the child to appropriate, consciously 
or unconsciously? Do we want the child to 

6s 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

believe that willing devotion to duty is likely 
to lead into such dire danger? Do we want to 
add a wolf to the fear-concepts of children 
who have quite enough to supply that element 
when they deal with dogs and motor-buses? 
Do we want them to believe in the certainty 
of magical and effortless salvation? And if 
the real meaning of the story is missed, both 
by the teacher and the child, is there any value 
in it, as a mere stimulus to imagination? 

The same indiscriminate belief in the value 
of a story leads many people to teach children 
parables and incidents from the Bible without 
adequate understanding of their meaning. 
The story of Legion and the destruction of the 
Gadarene swine has been related to children 
by parents and teachers who were unable to 
show in it any sort of message, or even to 
bring it into line with the most ordinary code 
of ethics. 

The legend of St. Christopher is an example 
of a story that is entirely valuable. There is 
nothing ugly in it. The magic part is no 
effortless salvation, but a truth that is truer 
than any — a truth that the child may not be 
ready to apprehend, but that he will realize 
in after years, when, after self-forgetful devo- 
tion to the service of his fellow-men, he finds 
the load becoming intolerably heavy; and the 

66 



Reality and Phantasy 

wakens to the fact that that load is the Christ 
and none other. 

Let us give the children Arthurian legends, 
stories of Drake and Raleigh, Livingstone and 
Stanley, Shackleton and Scott — stories that are 
full of hard-earned achievement, the glory of 
service, and the triumph over circumstances. 
And let us taboo all fairy tales dealing with 
the conflict between old and young; all that 
represent life and progress as unduly exacting 
or menacing; all that end up with effortless 
and magical solutions, and all that deal with 
punishment and vengeance. 

So much may be said of the stimulation of 
phantasy from without. It should be remem- 
bered, however, that although we may guard 
all the outward gates of the child's mind, and 
submit all incoming phantasy-material to a 
careful inspection, there is one line of com- 
munication which defies our vigilance; for 
it leads from the depths of the unconscious. 
The myths and symbols that belong to the 
racial unconscious emerge thence in dreams 
and day-dreams. Dr. Maurice Nicoll has 
pointed out the imp9ssibility of protecting the 
child's mind from all images of terror and 
nightmare: "The goblins of the night spring 
out of the sleeping senses themselves as ap- 
paritions older than the waking mind, as 

67 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

haunters older than the haunted. They lie in 
the psyche itself. They are, as Lamb has 
called them, transcripts, types, whose arche- 
types are in us, and eternal." ^ 

^ Dream Psychology, by Maurice NicoU. Oxford 
Medical Publications, 191 7. p. 4. 

This conception, which is based on Jung's theory of 
the collective unconscious, explains the common basis of 
symbolism which can be traced in dreams, and cannot 
be traced to any common source in consciousness. It 
also explains the powerful appeal which fairy stories 
make to the mind — an appeal which obviously is inde- 
pendent of the relation of the story to reason or 
experience. 

In the light of this theory it is possible to recognize in 
the myth-making tendency of the child traces of a certain 
stage in the historical process of the psychological evolu- 
tron of the race. In a recent account of Jung's teaching 
the process of man's adaptation to the two worlds of 
"subjective" and "objective" reality has been traced 
through three main stages. {Vide "Some Analytical In- 
terpretations," by Maurice Nicoll, Journal of Neurology 
and Psychopathology, May, 192 1, Vol. ii. No. 5, p. 26 f., 
from which the quotations that follow are taken.) In 
the first and most primitive stage they are not distin- 
guished ; the content of the collective unconscious is pro- 
jected into the object, which becomes thereby endowed 
with mysterious significance. "What is really subjective 
is not detached from what is objective. As long as this 
state persists there is participation mystique with the ob- 
ject. The object becomes endowed with demoniacal or 
God-like qualities, and is feared or worshipped accord- 
ingly. The whole world trembles with magic." This 

68 



Reality and Phantasy 

One of the greatest truths on the subject of 
phantasy is conveyed in the phantasy of Peter 
Pan. How far is it apprehended by the adults 
who take children to that play? It is that 
every single child has to go through the 

stage is easily recognizable in the development of the child : 
and indeed most people can remember the time when 
there was still for them participation mystique with some 
feared or cherished object. In the next stage of psycho- 
logical evolution, the collective unconscious begins to be 
detached from the objects which it once animated, and a 
partially distinct world of myth and symbol comes into 
being. "We must understand mythology historically, as 
a means whereby man set apart the content of the col- 
lective unconscious, and came into a truer relationship to 
the real object. By this means he first divided the world 
of psychological realities from the world of the objective 
realities." We are not concerned here to follow the 
process to the further stage of still more thorough 
differentiation, and more adequate adjustment both to 
the collective unconscious and to the external world. 
It is the second stage that provides the parallel to the 
period in childhood in which myths and fairy tales count 
for most. We need to include in our conception of the 
function of phantasy this view of it as an attempt to 
distinguish the two worlds which we describe unsatis- 
factorily, but recognizably, as "subjective" and "ob- 
jective." It is a temporary adjustment, and on its nega- 
tive side, as an escape from reality, it has to be dis- 
carded. On the positive side, it represents the dawning 
apprehension of a world of psychological reality, to which 
the individual has to learn to make a more and adequate 
adjustment. 

69 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

temptation of Peter Pan : that the determina- 
tion to retreat from reality and escape into 
phantasy and to live in a world of dreams is 
always near the child in adolescence; and that 
if he goes too far, he is unable to get back. 
This was the fate of Peter Pan, and of the boy 
who wrote the letter quoted at the beginning 
of this chapter. Peter Pan could not get 
back, even when he had his final chance: the 
girl, offering herself to him. 

If reality is made too harsh and uncom- 
promising, too difficult and menacing for the 
child, one of two things must happen : either 
he will escape into phantasy, as Peter Pan did ; 
or he will become a materialist to whom ideal- 
ism makes no appeal. The two reactions are 
strictly analogous to the two reactions to au- 
thority discussed in the previous chapter. If 
authority is made too hard, the child becomes 
ultra-suggestible, or a rebel; if reality is made 
too hard, then the child yields to it, in a way 
that is comparable to the action of the ultra- 
suggestible; or else he resists it, and becomes 
the materialist, comparable to the rebel. 



70 



CHAPTER IV 

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 
THE BOY 



The Sociological Standpoint: 

Psychology must be harmonized with it. 
The freedom of the individual and its limita- 
tions. 

The Evolutionary Standpoint: 

Educating the child for parenthood. 

The Goal of Development: 
The three adjustments. 
Contrasts in the process of development. 

The Rotation of Phases in the Boy: 

Development Arrested by the Mother: 
Dreams and examples. 

Development Arrested by the Father: 
Dreams and examples. 

Parsifal Myth, as Illustrating Emotional Devel- 
opment. 



EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT: 
THE BOY 

TN discussing the psychology of the child's 
-■■ development, it is essential to adopt a 
sociological standpoint. The new psychology 
has come in with a great protest against the 
crushing of individuality, the repression of 
childish and adolescent impulse, which was 
so characteristic of the Victorian age. In so 
doing, it has been inclined to swing too far 
in the opposite direction. There are schools 
of psycho-analysis to-day which appear to 
make the development of the individual the 
be-all and end-all of their work. But it is 
plain that any new addition to knowledge must 
correlate itself with other departments of 
human understanding and endeavour; and if 
the new psychology is to stand alone, if it can- 
not be related to modern sociology and to mod- 
ern religious views, it has evaded an impor- 
tant test of value, and it may fail to be of 
real service. It is therefore not possible to 
discuss the emotional development of the child 
and of the adolescent from the point of view 

73 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

of the child and the adolescent alone. A psy- 
cho-analyst who accepted the extreme indi- 
vidualist view, when confronted with the case 
of a confirmed pickpocket, was reduced to 
maintaining that the man had got to realize 
himself as a pickpocket, and that it was the 
fault of society that he had come to that point. 
He was prepared to disregard the general in- 
terests of society. The person who hustles on 
to a 'bus, and meets the descending stream of 
passengers halfway down the steps, asserts 
his independence of the conductor's order at 
the expense of the liberty of his fellow-crea- 
tures, and his expression of individuality is 
devoid of any social value. In so far as psy- 
chology appears to defend an ideal of self- 
realization which underestimates the claims 
of the community, in so far does it weaken the 
effectiveness of its true demand for liberty, by 
making an exaggerated claim. The student 
of analytical psychology will often enough 
find himself called upon to defend the cause 
of freedom : the freedom of the child to grow 
up and — it may be — to develop views that 
are entirely opposed to those of his parents; 
freedom from emotional domination and the 
tyranny of unwise afifection; freedom of the 
individual judgment to find its own standard 
of values from the mass of collective opinion. 

74 



Emotional Development: The Boy 

In all these ways, and many more, he will find 
himself sincerely and urgently on the side of 
freedom. But he will not strengthen his posi- 
tion by using the appeal to liberty indiscrim- 
inately. There are people who cut their way 
through many intricate problems on these 
lines. The case for divorce is quite simple to 
them, because marriage so often presents "the / 
tragic spectacle of two people yoked together 
who cannot develop their own individuality." 
It does not occur to them that this tragic spec- 
tacle may perhaps have to be endured and per- 
petuated, because the individual is of less ac- 
count than society; and because two people 
who have perpetrated the huge blunder of 
getting married to each other must endure the 
dreary results for the sake of what the mar- 
riage tie means to society, and for the sake of 
what parenthood means to the next generation. 
Therefore, in discussing the development of 
the child, it will be assumed that freedom im- 
poses its own limitations, and that the freedom 
of the individual has to be restrained when it 
begins to infringe the freedom of other people. 
It is also necessary to adopt the evolutionary 
standpoint, accepting it in its simplest and 
most indisputable form as the conviction that 
the next generation matters more than the 
present generation. Its obvious corollary is 

75 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

that in the development of the child we are 
thinking of him, not only as a possible citizen, 
but as something more important: a possible 
parent. We are not only concerned that when 
he has a vote, he should be able to go to the 
poll, and vote reasonably in the interests of 
his own generation ; but that he should vote in 
a way that is right for the generation beyond. 
It may be suspected that this is ultimately a 
mere biological maxim — something that is 
concerned with "life" (to ^f\v) rather than 
"the right kind of life" (to ei) ^Yjv) ; but the 
evolutionary standpoint implies here a value 
in quality as well as in survival. A man's 
judgment in matters of citizenship, education 
and religion is normally at its best when he is 
considering the interests of his children. 

We are left with certain indications of the 
goal of individual development. The child 
has to grow up, and to make the three princi- 
pal adjustments which are demanded of the 
complete human being. He has to make the 
adjustment to society: to pass from the self- 
centred isolation of infancy to full com- 
munion with his fellow-creatures. The human 
species is gregarious; and if the individual 
fails to make his adjustment to the herd, his 
life is incomplete, and his character is not 
fully developed. Secondly, he has to make the 

76 



Emotional Development: The Boy 

adjustment to the potential mate. From the 
point of view of character-development, it 
matters relatively little w^hether the boy or girl 
ultimately marries; but it matters intensely 
whether he or she is psychologically adjusted 
to the potential mate and to the conception of 
parenthood. The third adjustment which has 
to be made is the adjustment to the Infinite. 
It is useless for a person to consider himself 
an adult while he is still pretending to himself 
and to the world that he does not know 
whether there is a God, and is indifferent on 
the subject. He is far from maturity if he does 
not know himself well enough to realize that 
he has got to settle in his mind his own view 
of the Infinite, and to adjust himself to it. 
Nor is his adjustment adequately made if he 
carries through life a conception founded 
primarily on childish experience: the concep- 
tion of a God who is identified either with the 
severity or with the indulgence of his parents. 
In making these three adjustments, the child 
is involved in a series of complete transitions. 
He begins life entirely dependent, ego-centric, 
irresponsible; he should become fully inde- 
pendent, altruistic, responsible. He has to 
pass from the completely filial to the com- 
pletely parental attitude. From being the vic- 
tim of circumstance and environment, help- 

77 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

less in the face of these two factors, he should 
end by being independent of both, and the 
captain of his own soul. Lastly, from being 
first unconscious, and then more and more 
conscious of himself as a centre of attraction, 
he should attain to the completely adult atti- 
tude which includes the readiness to be ig- 
nored. These are drastic changes: and we 
have seen how the two mechanisms of sug- 
gestibility and phantasy are needed to ease 
the process of transition. It remains to con- 
sider the successive phases of growth which 
can be distinguished in the girl and the boy. 
The determining factor in these phases is 
the dominant emotional interest; it will not 
be the exclusive interest, but psychologically 
it is the dominant interest that counts. The 
rotation of these phases in the boy's emotional 
development is represented on the diagram: 
which shows also the approximate ages at 
which they occur. It cannot be too clearly 
stated that the ages shown are only an average, 
and that there is a great deal of individual 
variation. The child begins by being purely 
ego-centric; but within a short time his in- 
terest begins to flow out towards his mother. 
She becomes first the sole, and then the dom- 
inant emotional factor in his life, and he associ- 
ates her with ideas of nourishment, comfort, 

78 



Emotional Development: The Boy 



consolation, and protection. This relationship 
to her shows all those characteristics which 
were enumerated as belonging tothechildish at- 
titude : it is a relation of complete dependence, 
irresponsibility, and the rest. At about the 



I Mother 

0-8 



HETERO SEXUAL 



HOMO SEXUAL 



E Mafe 
18 — 




8-12 



in School fel/Oivi 
ia-i8 



age of seven, eight, or nine, interest begins to 
be transferred to the father. The dawning of 
this phase is seen in the familiar phrases of the 
small boy: "When I am a big man, I'm going 
to have a big stick like Daddy. . . ." What- 
ever symbol the child uses, the main idea is 

79 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

the same. This emulation of his father is the 
very first step that the child takes in passing 
out of the phase of complete dependence. It 
is only a step in phantasy so far; but it is very 
significant, and during these four years or so 
the relative influences of the father and the 
mother are intensely important and formative. 
The boy at this stage should normally be hero- 
worshipping his father, and should be a good 
deal formed by his example. 

After this follows the school age — from 
twelve to eighteen. Actually, it is only the 
school age for a limited number of boys. 
There are some who go to a boarding school 
at seven and a half, and there is the vast 
majority whose school career is completely 
over at fourteen or sixteen. Psychologically, 
however, it is the ideal school age for all boys; 
and the development of the normal public 
school boy can be examined as a typical ex- 
ample. 

When a boy first goes to school, the imme- 
diate reaction of his mind to a strange and 
rather hostile environment is to look for a 
father-substitute: some one to whom he can 
stand in the same relation of emulation and 
dependence as he stood to his father. He may 
find it in one of the masters, or in the captain 
of the fifteen, or in a prefect. ' He may be 

80 



Emotional Development: The Boy 

conscious of the protection of an older boy; 
and he will also think to himself: "When I 
am as old as Jones Major, I hope I'll be in the 
Eleven." It is phantasy still, but he has made 
a tremendous advance. When the hero was 
his father, the phantasy was perhaps thirty 
years ahead of him; when it is Jones Major, 
it is only five or six years ahead. His phan- 
tasy has come very much nearer to reality. 

This period of the boy's life falls roughly 
into three different sections, as he passes 
through the lower, middle, and upper school. 
In the lower school the boy is still having a 
considerable share of protection. He is a 
fag. His prefect and other prefects have a 
certain responsibility for him; his master is 
aware that nothing must happen to boys as 
small as this; public opinion demands that he 
shall not be unduly maltreated. He is still in 
a position of dependence. 

The middle-school period is the most crit- 
ical and serious. The age coincides with the 
chief crisis of his biological development; 
and he is passing through the most difficult 
phase of transition to independence. He 
is no longer under protection. He must learn 
now to stand on his own feet. At the 
same time, he has not much scope for asser- 
tion. He is between the upper and the nether 

8i 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

millstone : there is neither the position of hero- 
worship and dependence, nor of power and 
responsibility. Life may be very difficult for 
him at this stage. 

By the time the boy reaches the upper school 
age — from sixteen to eighteen — he should be- 
gin to feel his power; and it is the genius of 
our public-school system that po\yer is imme- 
diately associated with responsibility. It may 
or may not be true that Waterloo was won 
upon the playing fields of Eton : but it appears 
indisputable that British success in coloniza- 
tion and in the guardianship of primitive 
peoples is the direct result of a training that 
from the first harnesses power to responsibil- 
ity. Other nations who have copied the Eng- 
lish public-school system have almost invari- 
ably drawn the line at this point. The big 
boys may have been called prefects or mon- 
itors : but there would be always a master 
looking over their shoulders to see that the 
small boys were not sacrificed to their injustice 
or cruelty. We have adopted the policy of 
trusting the big boy; and if we have paid the 
price of trust in sacrificing the well-being and 
comfort of a certain number of small boys, we 
have also found it the essential condition of 
developing a character that can be trusted 
with power. 

82 



Emotional Development: The Boy 

If this principle is accepted as true and 
vitally important, it is a sufficient indictment 
of a social and educational system that cuts the 
majority of boys adrift from school at the age 
of fourteen, or even at sixteen. They are 
bursting w^ith power, and they are set free in 
a position of minimum responsibility. The 
hiatus between the time of leaving school and 
its discipline, and the time of taking up the 
responsibilities of marriage and of adult life 
is responsible for the great problem of hooli- 
ganism, the solution of which is left to various 
voluntary associations, such as the Boy Scout 
Movement. It is very little use trying to train 
boys in civics before they are sixteen; and it is 
equally little use to attempt it after they are 
twenty-one, and have married and settled 
down. It is at the period between these ages 
that the ideas of responsibility have to be 
driven home. 

Somewhere about the age of seventeen or 
eighteen the boy normally begins to be aware 
of those biological tendencies which, all 
through the animal kingdom, are associated 
with the adornment of the person. If he can- 
not sing like the nightingale, he can at least 
wear resplendent socks; and if he cannot strut 
like the peacock, he can purchase more bril- 
liantine : and these things he does to commend 

83 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

himself in the eyes of Robinson's sister, who is 
coming down to see the match. This is per- 
fectly normal, simple and desirable. (There is 
another motive for personal adornment which 
is less wholesome: the autoerotic motive 
known as Narcissism. This is a definite psy- 
chological phenomenon: but it is no part of 
normal development, being in fact a regres- 
sion.) From this point begins the boy's in- 
terest in the potential mate; and it should nor- 
mally lead him on to courtship, love, marriage 
and parenthood. 

In reviewing the four phases, it is plain 
that, as has been already pointed out,<hey con- 
stitute so many steps in the transition from 
dependence to independence. The second 
point to be observed is that the boy's relation 
to the female sex goes through a complete 
transformation — from dependence upon the 
mother in the first phase, to the full adult re- 
sponsibility of marriage in the fourth. It 
may be seen from the diagram that between 
these two periods of psychological hetero- 
sexuality, there lie the two periods of psycho- 
logical homo-sexuality. That is to say there 
is a period of roughly ten years when the boy 
has to wander in a kind of wilderness, where 
no woman should be the dominant emotional 
factor in his life. There are many mothers 

84 



Emotional Development: The Boy 

who cannot conceive that this should be so; 
and schoolmasters of insight and experience 
are aw^are of the peculiar difficulties that they 
place in the way of their boys' develop- 
ment. If we ask why it is that the emotional 
domination of the mother can be such a 
paralysing influence in a boy's life, the answer 
is to be found written on the diagram: it is 
that as long as the mother is holding on to her 
original relationship to the boy, it is impos- 
sible for him to transform his attitude towards 
the other sex. He cannot grow up. It is 
only by the self-extinction of the mother dur- 
ing these years that he can have full oppor- 
tunity to develop. 

This is a hard saying: and it appears to dis- 
credit a thing that is often admired in a 
schoolboy — his chivalry towards his mother. 
The fact remains that, however much we may 
appreciate this quality socially, it often covers 
a confused attitude towards the other sex, 
which is anything but helpful to the boy. 
Once he has passed on to the fourth phase, and 
completed his rotation of development, there 
is no chivalry, no attention he can pay to his 
mother, which is anything but admirable; but 
during the intermediate phases, they must not 
be interpreted in too high or idealistic a sense. 
Schoolmasters, who are trying to stimulate a 

85 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

boy to moral effort, sometimes use his devo- 
tion to his mother as an emotional lever. The 
result may appear to be successful, but the 
method is dangerous. From the years of 
eight to eighteen, approximately, every emo- 
tional appeal must be based on the claim of 
growth, progress, virility. Work on the 
schoolboy's idealism of manhood; challenge 
him to "vindicate himself under heaven as a 
God-made man" — but not as a worthy little 
son of his demonstrative mother. 

The writer has had the doubtful privilege 
of dealing with the dreams and the inner 
mental life of a number of boys who pass as 
normal, but whose development had been 
hindered at this point. They were particu- 
larly devoted to their mothers, and they had 
never fallen in love — two facts which had 
never been correlated, but which were shown 
to be completely interdependent. In one case 
the boy was very far from being a boy in 
years : he is now thirty-six, and he is still un- 
married, and living with his wealthy and 
adoring mother. It is of course not only the 
mother who may hinder the boy's develop- 
ment. The father may fail to inspire him, 
and may alienate his sympathies, so that he 
is driven to identify himself with the mother, 
and turns away from the masculine ideal. In 

86 



Emotional Development: The Boy 

this case both obstacles were put in the boy's 
way. His father was an irascible old colonel, 
who appeared unjust, harsh and unsympa- 
thetic. It was with undisguised relief that 
the mother and son saw him rejoin his regi- 
ment when his leave was up. And because 
the boy was the only thing that she really 
possessed in the world, the mother was so de- 
voted to him that she could never let him go. 
One of the boy's dreams ran thus: ''/ was 
riding behind a carriage in which my mother 
was driving. It was going very slowly, and 
I was determined to pass it. With a great 
effort, I succeeded. I then found that I was 
riding side-saddle/' All means of locomo- 
tion in dreams represent character develop- 
ment. His was shown to be slow (which was 
only too true), and it was kept back by his 
mother. When he has passed her, he finds 
that he is still in the attitude of a woman. The 
femininity of his character came out in other 
dreams equally clearly. ''I was standing out- 
side a house, waiting for a man to come out." 
The man was his own masculine self, which 
had never yet appeared. ^'I found that I was 
dressed in a peacock-coloured skirt." In this 
brilliant cartoon he is identified with the least 
effective of all male creatures. All that there 
was of manliness about him was this exhibi- 

87 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

tionism, this vanity and self-satisfaction which 
his mother had developed in him. It was said 
that the mother could not let him go. This 
is strictly true : for when he ceased to be a 
child in years, she had kept him psychologi- 
cally a child but making him into an invalid. 
Strenuous efiforts were made to set him free, 
but by going round to a very large number 
of consultants, his mother found one who 
agreed with her that he had a weak heart, 
and he was made an invalid once more. When 
his mother dies, he will probably marry a 
mother-substitute, who will study his health 
and his comfort, and protect him from any 
of the remote dangers of growing up. 

A man of twenty-six had a dream that he 
was ivalking along and that a woman, wheel- 
ing a perambulator with a baby in it, insisted 
on following him.. He couldn't get rid of 
them. He was a man; but the feminine 
characteristic that he had never been able to 
throw ofif, the childish characteristic that he 
was unable to live down persisted in holding 
him back. He came to a hill, and the peram- 
bulator went faster and faster. He realized 
that unless he did something there would be 
an accident. It was no longer any good trying 
to ignore them: he must interfere. He pulled 

88 



Emotional Development: The Boy 

himself together, and threw himself in the 
way, and stopped the perambulator before it 
reached the bottom of the hill. The end of 
the dream gives a picture of a definite virile 
desire to make good, and to prevent the 
catastrophe. And this was a genuine factor 
in his mental situation. He had had a better 
chance than the first boy. He was the son 
of a perfectly sensible mother, and of a father 
who was the pattern of all that a citizen and 
a churchwarden and a husband and a father 
should be. He knew not only what his chil- 
dren ought to do, but what they ought to think 
and feel and believe : and he knew it all with 
absolute finality. It was this finality which 
had been the obstacle to his son's development. 
He was of the sensitive type that is absolutely 
unable to grow up against, or In spite of a 
barrier of this kind. He withdrew Into him- 
self, and retreated from the whole conception 
of manhood. Independence, aggression and 
responsibility. In one of his dreams he found 
a Black Maria and a military chaplain wait- 
ing at a station (representing religion and 
discipline, and the hell-fire and punishment 
conceptions). He saw his father in a railway 
carriage. The door was open, and he tried 
to get in before the train had stopped, and 

89 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

nearly had a fall. He decided to go in a 
smoking carriage by himself. The father dis- 
approved of smoking. The parent who is 
trying to get the boy into his own compart- 
ment is likely to produce an accident, which 
may end in his not coming at all, or else he 
may drive the boy to take some course in which 
he is sure of earning parental disapproval. If 
the boy is presented with an aspect of adult 
life, of manhood and of responsibility that 
is too uninviting, too hard, too rigid and too 
difficult, he is likely to shrink back from the 
whole idea of progress. Sometimes it is the 
father's absence which hinders the boy's de- 
velopment; and sometimes it is simply fear 
of him. In one of the large military hospitals, 
it was reckoned that roughly twenty per cent 
of the men suffering from war neuroses had 
a history of alcoholism in the father, dating 
from the patient's boyhood. 

The view of the emotional development of 
the male which has been put forward in this 
chapter has an interesting light thrown upon 
it if it is studied in connexion with Wagner's 
version of the Parsifal story. The psycho- 
logical truths, which have been presented 
here in bare, and perhaps unconvincing out- 
line, find expression there in a myth of ex- 

90 



Emotional Development: The Boy 

traordinary beauty and power. There is a 
wealth of detailed symbolism that is worth 
very careful study in the story of the trans- 
formation of Parsifal from the "blameless 
fool," brought up in the wilderness by his 
mother, to the tried and perfected redeemer 
of society. 

These are by no means the only ways in 
which the boy's development may be checked. 
Each of the four phases has its characteristic 
dangers, and at any point he may receive a 
rebuff which pushes him back to the previous 
phase. At the beginning of the fourth phase 
he may fall violently in love with a girl, who 
turns out to be insincere, shallow, cynical or 
unsympathetic. His first hetero-sexual ro- 
mance has been shattered, and in his disillu- 
sionment and disappointment he falls back 
into the homo-sexual attitude. This is one of 
the ways in which "confirmed bachelors" are 
made. 

The men whose interest remains perma- 
nently and exclusively with their own sex are 
sometimes considered to represent an "inter- 
mediate type" which has a right to develop 
along its own lines. In our tangled, groping 
and complex civilization there are undoubt- 
edly many such types, and it is not difficult to 

91 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

trace the causes that have produced them; 
they are the result of abnormal and artificial 
conditions; the conception of the intermediate 
type has no place in normal psychology, or in 
normal sociology. This view is discussed in 
more detail at the end of the next chapter. 



92 



CHAPTER V 

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT: 
THE GIRL 



Rotation of Phases. 

Two Important Contrasts to the Course of 
Development in the Boy: 

1. The constant maternal impulse: barriers in its 

way: 

(a) The husband, social and legal. 

(b) The husband, physical. 

Fear of the conjugal — 
Mary Rose. 
The nurse's dream. 
The child of ten. 

(c) The fear of motherhood: 

Dream of " the woman in 
the wood." 

(d) The discovery of being " not wanted." 

2. The relation of the two homo-sexual phases. 

The Homo-sexual Phase in the Adolescent Girl: 
No magical solution. 
Dangers — dream of flowers and fire. 
Safeguards — public opinion and games. 
A problem not of the elimination of sentiment, 
but of the direction of interest. 

The Homo-sexual Attitude in the Adult: 
" The intermediate type." 

Criticism from the standpoint of sociology. 
Criticism from the standpoint of psychology. 

Two Criticisms Discussed: 

1. Misunderstanding of "the adjustment to the 

potential mate." 

2. The man, the woman, and the human being. 



EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT: 
THE GIRL 

'T^HE rotation of phases in the girl and in 
•*- the boy differ in some notable ways. The 
first phase is exactly the same, except that it 
lasts a little longer: the girl being perhaps 
two years behind the boy in throwing off the 
completely filial and dependent attitude 
towards the mother. The girl then passes on, 
not to the father-phase, as the boy does, but 
to the one in which schoolfellows occupy the 
dominant position in her emotional life. This 
phase lasts from about ten to fifteen, and it 
therefore includes the period in which the 
normal girl passes through the biological 
changes of puberty. Tl^is is the time in which 
independence has to be learnt. It is just as 
important for the girl as it is for the boy; but 
she has a shorter time in which to learn it, and 
at seventeen she appears more grown up than 
the boy of the same age. The girl's inde- 
pendence is different from the boy's : it is not 
an absolute thing, and it is more subtle and 
easily thrown out of balance. 

95 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

The length of the second phase obviously 
varies very much according to the education 
that the girl receives. The public-school girl 
usually remains in this phase until she is 
eighteen or nineteen. This must be regarded 
as an artificial retarding of development; but 
it is probably justified by the conditions of 
society. It is a convention which has grown 
up in response to a definite social need, which 
was not met by the previous type of woman's 
education, which was ''finished" at an earlier 
age. 

In the case of the public-school girl, phase 
two often lasts till eighteen or nineteen. Does 
this mean that her development is being 
artificially retarded, or is it just a normal 
variation? 

It is during the third phase — from fifteen 
to eighteen — that the part played by the 
father in the girl's development becomes most 
crucial. The actual period of his primacy 
in the emotional life of his daughter may be 
a brief one; but though it counts compara- 
tively little from the positive point of view, 
from the negative point of view it is of vital 
importance. That is to say that if the father 
has failed to play his part, the efifect upon the 
daughter's emotional development tends to be 

96 



Emotional Development: The Girl 

disastrous. The reasons for this will be dis- 
cussed later. 

At about the age of eighteen the girl should 
have reached the fourth phase, during which 
she is ready to love and to be loved, and so 



I Mother 
0-10 



H Scnoolfe/Zoivs 
10 -i5 




III Father 
15 -»8 



makes her adjustment to the idea of parent- 
hood, and to the actual or potential mate. 

In looking back over the phases of develop- 
ment of the girl and the boy, two very impor- 
tant general contrasts can be observed. The 
first of these lies in the fact that there is in 

97 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

the girl a constant and permanent develop- 
mental impulse which has no exact parallel 
in the boy. The second is concerned with the 
difference in the relation of the two homo- 
sexual phases. 

Through the psychology of the boy — 
though not quite from the beginning — there 
runs the line of self-assertion, the impulse to 
achievement. At a much earlier age, from 
the moment when she first nurses a doll, the 
girl has begun to show signs of the impulse 
which rurvs through her course of develop- 
ment: the maternal urge, which is a far more 
constant and a more homogeneous thing than 
the urge to self-assertion in the boy. This 
primary emotional impulse in the life of the 
woman is often unconscious, and often unex- 
pressed. There are periods when it appears 
to be completely absent; and there are girls 
and women who appear to betray no sign of 
anything that could be called a maternal im- 
pulse. Nevertheless, if they are to be classed 
as normal, the assumption is that the impulse 
is merely out of sight for the moment, and 
not permanently absent. There is nothing 
strictly comparable to this in the boy's devel- 
opment. The nearest approach to it is the 
impulse to independence and achievement in 
the widest sense of the word; but the girl has 

98 



Emotional Development: The Girl 

the advantage in follow^ing a far more definite 
and clearly-directed line of development. It 
leads straight to the parental attitude, w^hich 
the boy only reaches in a more indirect way. 

In both sexes the conjugal, or mating in- 
stinct appears at a certain phase: but it is, or 
should be, secondary to the more constant im- 
pulse of life. In practice, it is expected that 
the man should be first married to his job, and 
only after that married to his wife; and in the 
girl the maternal impulse should be stronger 
than the conjugal. It is even more impor- 
tant to have good mothers in a society than 
to have good wives. 

The maternal impulse very early begins to 
meet with barriers in the way of its expres- 
sion. The little girl at first announces her 
intentions clearly: 'When I am big, I am 
going to have five daughters and six little 
boys" — or whatever it may be. She doesn't 
think she can be bothered with a husband. 
She is told perhaps that unless she has a hus- 
band she may not have children — an unwise 
way of putting it. Or it is said that God does 
not send babies where there is not a husband. 
Evidently it is a conception that must be 
accepted; and this idea of the necessary legal 
or social husband is a barrier which she over- 
comes without much difficulty. She fits the 

99 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

idea of a "Mr. So-and-So" into the picture. 
At a later stage, she begins to apprehend 
dimly that the barrier of a husband between 
herself and motherhood is not only social and 
conventional, but physical; and that it in- 
volves some mysterious act or proceeding of 
which she can have no understanding, and 
only some vague suspicion. During the 
second phase, when she is chiefly concerned 
with her schoolfellows, her ^conscious is full 
of bewilderment and doubt and questioning. 
With some girls it remains tfhere for a re- 
markable length of time; with some it 
emerges very early into consciousness. A 
great deal depends upon social environment; 
a certain amount upon physical development; 
and a certain amount also upon the outlook 
of parents and teachers. The part played by 
the father is of supreme importance in help- 
ing the girl to get past this barrier of doubt 
and fear of the unknown. , Through him she 
should realize that man, as the aggressive 
male, the necessary husband, can be associated 
with ideas of consideration, reliability, tender- 
ness, trustworthiness and sympathy. She 
should be able to argue to herself: , "Well, 
anyhow, if a man like Daddy comes along, I 
would be perfectly prepared to trust myself 
entirely to him." When the father fails to 

lOO 



Emotional Development: The Girl 

inspire confidence, when he fails to perform 
this function of reconciliation, serious dam- 
age is done to the emotional development of 
the girl. The nature of this damage is seen 
by psychotherapists in the many cases of 
breakdown in later life, which can be traced 
unquestionably to the third phase, and to the 
failure of the father. It may also be seen in 
the still more frequent cases of girls and 
women who do not break down, but who go 
through life with a permanent bias of hos- 
tility towards the male sex. They may have 
been unable to recover from the emotional 
reaction to a father who was alcoholic, or 
who was suspected of infidelity and threat- 
ened with a separation or divorce, or who 
was tyrannical : or merely negative. And it is 
not the ill-treatment of the daughter by the 
father that has been mainly responsible for 
this result; the critical factor is the husband's 
treatment of his wife in the daughter's 
presence. 

In Sir James Barrie's play, Mary Rose, 
there is a perfect picture of this fear of the 
conjugal in the girl. Mary Rose hid in the 
apple tree, and her father called to her and 
said, "Where are you?" She replied, "In the 
apple tree." "What for?" "Hiding from 
Simon, from you — I don't know." Mary 

lOI 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

Rose at that moment was facing the reality 
of a prospective marriage, and as she did so, 
she became paralysed with fright, as many a 
perfectly normal girl has been; and she hid 
in the apple tree, not only from the future 
husband whom she had just accepted, but 
from the whole idea implied by matrimony 
of man the aggressor. And so she included 
her father: "I am hiding from Simon, I am 
hiding from you." 

An example may be given of a case in which 
emotional development was turned aside from 
the normal path at a very early age. At nine 
years old, a girl was exposed to an unrighteous 
act by a man; and from that time her whole 
psychology turned into channels of fear and 
apprehension. The first important reaction 
was that she determined to become a nurse. 
It is interesting to note that she realized un- 
consciously what the nursing profession had 
to offer her in her particular situation : in the 
first place, a great opportunity of direct and 
satisfying sublimation of the maternal im- 
pulse, without the inclusion of the conjugal 
factor; and secondly, the assured protection 
from male aggression which the nurse's uni- 
form is supposed to guarantee. She grew up, 
and became a nurse, and a man. wished to 
marry her. She could not refuse him, because 

102 



Emotional Development: The Girl 

she felt that he was a thoroughly good man ; 
but she could not accept him. He waited for 
a period of something like seven years, and 
then she definitely refused him. As she went 
on, she became a more and more perfect nurse 
in all ways in which the helpless patient was 
concerned; but it was noticed — and she said 
it herself — that she was losing interest more 
and more in the cases that were not helpless. 
It was noticed also that she was showing 
signs of "developing the matron spirit"; she 
was becoming self-assertive, and rather dom- 
ineering, in a way that was perfectly foreign 
to her real character. She felt it herself, and 
admitted that she was not getting on so well 
in the hospital as she had once done, but she 
felt unable to understand or alter it. At about 
this time she had a dream, which ran thus : 
^'We were sitting at dinner. Water was being 
handed round from a skin. Everybody else 
had tumblers or cups: I only had a spoon of 
rat-tail pattern. Somebody said: 'Never 
mind; hold it out.' I held it out, and as the 
water was poured onto it, it turned into a 
tumbler^ But I could still see the rat-tail pat- 
tern on the glass." The dream makes use of 
the two elementary symbols of the sexes that 
run through all mythology and all dream- 
symbolism : the symbols of the Cup and Spear, 

103 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

here represented by the tumbler and the rat- 
tail pattern. The Spear represents virility; 
it is primarily a phallic symbol, and sec- 
ondarily the symbol of the male characteristics 
of self-assertion and executive power. The 
Cup or the Grail is the great symbol of the 
woman and her qualities of receptiveness. 
This quality is shown as being quite inade- 
quate in the dreamer: she has at first only a 
spoon instead of a tumbler; and the spoon is 
marked by the phallic symbol. But her 
womanly capacity is there potentially; and 
as soon as she adopts the receptive attitude, it 
is increased. The dream ends with a final 
touch of criticism : the rat-tail pattern has not 
quite disappeared. The dream is given at 
this point because it expresses, with a kind of 
elementary completeness, certain bed rock 
facts about character and development. Some 
of the principles of interpretation which are 
here assumed will be discussed in a later 
chapter. 

Another dream that is worth quoting in 
this connexion is that of a girl of ten, who 
was perfectly normal and healthy: but rather 
self-assertive, and lacking in some of the more 
gentle and subtle elements of a girl's psychol- 
ogy: — ^'I was walking with a man. I tried 
to leave him, but I saw a wagonette coming 

104 



Emotional Development: The Girl 

along with a lot of nasty men in it, and I was 
frightened, so I went back to the friendly 
man, because I thought he would protect me" 
"The friendly man" was her own masculinity. 
Down in her unconscious there was already 
this idea of protecting herself from male 
aggression by maintaining and developing her 
own masculine characteristics. What she was 
dreaming at ten, she might be doing at eigh- 
teen. Needless to say, she would not have 
understood, or been helped, if she had had this 
interpretation given to her; but it could be 
given to her parents; and it could show them 
where her danger was going to lie. If she 
had been exposed to an alcoholic father, or 
even to a father who was inconsiderate and 
unsympathetic towards her mother, she would 
have been reinforced in her idea of hanging 
on to her masculine characteristics as the best 
armour for life. Instead, she needed to be set 
free from this phantom of fear, and the de- 
fence and resistance that resulted from it. 

There is another barrier which the maternal 
impulse has to meet, and that is the fear of 
motherhood. The point at which a girl faces 
its physical implications sometimes comes 
very early in life, and sometimes not till after 
marriage. An extreme case is that of a patient 
whose whole psychology turned upon a fear 

105 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

of motherhood, which could be traced back to 
her childhood. When she was about five years 
old she had heard her mother say: "If you 
children knew what it was to be a mother, 
you would be a great deal more appreciative 
of your mother, and you would think twice 
before becoming mothers yourselves." The 
remark was probably meant for an elder sister ; 
but it had remained fixed in the child's mind, 
and she could never forget it. 

The same fear was one of the factors of 
the mental situation of a girl of twenty-three, 
who had broken down over the question of an 
engagement. She had this dream: — ''/ heard 
that one of your patients had killed her 
baby. I was talking to some one in your study 
who tried to remind me that eight years ago 
a woman was in a wood, and a man had sud- 
denly told her that she was going to have a 
baby. She was so frightened that she killed 
the baby, and buried it in the wood." The 
dream is a particularly interesting one, be- 
cause it is one of those that have a double 
thread of meaning running through. The 
baby represents first the physical baby and 
so the conception of motherhood; and, sec- 
ondly, re-birth — the new adjustment, the new 
phase that was germinating, and had been 
killed ofl?. '^Some one in your study" brings in 

1 06 



Emotional Development: The Girl 

the idea of analysis, through which she comes 
into contact with her own unconscious, and 
things that she had forgotten. ''Eight years 
ago" — that is, when she was fifteen — what 
had happened to her? She recalled it with 
difficulty. At the age of fifteen she had been 
with a schoolboy of about her own age, who 
had asked her unsuitable questions. She had 
stopped the conversation, but the questions 
had been enough to bring her for a moment 
face to face with the idea of physical mother- 
hood. She had come up against it prema- 
turely, and she had repressed it completely, 
and not thought of it again. "A man had sud- 
denly told her that she was going to have a 
baby, and she <was so frightened that she killed 
the baby, and buried it in the wood." The 
wood represents the dark and hidden depths 
of the unconscious. The baby that she had 
killed and buried in her unconscious was the 
re-birth which was just beginning to take 
place, at the opening of her third phase of 
development — a new orientation which would 
have included the adjustment to the physical 
implications of motherhood. 

There is a wrong that is sometimes done to 
the child, which adds enormously to the bur- 
den of growing up, and facing life. The 
parents may commit the well-nigh unpardon- 

107 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

able sin of letting the girl know that she is 
not wanted, because there were two, three or 
four already, and a boy had been hoped for. 
The parents may never say it to the child, but 
if this is known at all, there is always the 
chance that aunts or uncles or nurses or 
servants may, in a moment of indiscretion or 
spite, pass the word on; and the girl as she 
grows up will find it terribly hard to forget. 
These are some of the barriers which rise 
up in the mind of the girl, sometimes in 
adolescence, sometimes before it, and some- 
times in the unopened mind of a woman who 
is past adolescence physically, but has not even 
reached it psychologically, and emotionally. 
They are fears that have to be met openly 
and frankly and on the conscious plane. 
Sometimes the girl is fortunate enough to 
have a mother or somebody else from whom 
she can get reassurance and straight informa- 
tion; but more often than not she says, as 
countless people have said to the writer: "Of 
course, I had nobody to ask, so I kept it to 
myself." And so the questioning goes on, 
sometimes conscious and unexpressed, some- 
times unconscious and not even recognized in 
the girl's mind: "What are going to be the 
implications, especially the physical implica- 
tions, of growing up? What will marriage 

io8 



Emotional Development: The Girl 

demand? And motherhood?" The obscure 
working of these fears withholds many girls 
from developing normally and realizing 
themselves to the full. 

It was said that there were two main differ- 
ences between courses of development in the 
girl and in the boy. The first of these has 
been dealt with; the second lies in the dif- 
ferent relation of the two homo-sexual phases. 
The two phases of psychological homo-sexu- 
ality in the boy were passed through, roughly, 
from the ages of eight to eighteen: that is to 
say, they persisted up to the verge of the mat- 
ing period. In the girl the simpler process of 
development takes place: the two homo- 
sexual phases come first, and then, from about 
the time of puberty, she passes for good to 
the hetero-sexual phase. She has not got to 
transform her adjustment to the other sex in 
the same radical way that the boy has to do, 
as he passes from the original emotional rela- 
tion to the mother to the ultimate relation to 
the wife. It is true that she has her pilgrim- 
age to make from the filial attitude of depen- 
dence to the adult attitude of independence; 
but it is a subtler change than the boy passes 
through. Her self-realization does not lie 
along the line of self-assertion, but it includes 
a form of independence which is a strange 

109 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

blending of individuality and self-extinction. 
The homo-sexual phase of the girl's adoles- 
cence is one that is peculiarly the concern of 
the teacher, and it often gives rise to great 
anxiety and perplexity. The new psychology 
has no magical solution to offer to these diffi- 
culties, no cut-and-dried rules that can be 
applied unfailingly in all cases, and no method 
of eliminating all danger from the situation. 
It should, however, be able to contribute 
something to the understanding of the prob- 
lem. It is similar to the problem with boys; 
but in the case of girls the danger is less acute, 
more common, more subtle, and harder to 
define and to guard against. No intimacy 
between adolescent girls that is at all senti- 
mental and romantic is devoid of risk; but so 
much of it is normal and natural that to play 
for safety consistently would be as undesirable 
as it is impossible. It would lead to a great 
impoverishment of the lives of many girls 
who would have avoided the dangers, and 
whose experience would have been enriched 
by a close friendship. The danger lies in the 
possibility of romance being kindled to 
passion, the point at which sentiment is associ- 
ated with physical sensation. The uncon- 
scious estimate of this danger is shown in the 
dream of a girl, who had conceived a romantic 

no 



Emotional Development: The Girl 

devotion for an older woman. This Mrs. X 
was gifted, charming and beautiful — and per- 
haps slightly sentimental. ''/ dreamed that 
Mrs, X was holding up a hunch of roses of 
transcendent beauty. She took them out one 
by one and dropped them to the ground. As 
each touched the earth, it burst into flame. I 
ivas fascinated by the miracle, until suddenly 
I realized that I was surrounded by flames, 
and I woke in terror." Flowers are the sym- 
bol of romance; and this is a telling picture 
of the experience of the adolescent, playing 
with a romantic situation, until it suddenly 
assumes a menacing aspect, and brings a terri- 
fied awakening to reality. Fear sometimes 
intervenes to save the individual from danger, 
but it is a thoroughly undesirable motive to 
stimulate from without. There are plenty of 
influences which should be at work to dis- 
courage this type of experience without hav- 
ing resource to the appeal to fear. This, in- 
deed, is likely to surround the subject with 
an emotional atmosphere, which is the reverse 
of helpful. 

The problem should be solved as far as 
possible indirectly, that is, by the general 
standard of ideals and interests in the school, 
rather than by focussing attention upon it. 
The teacher needs to study and to watch with 

1 1 1 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

the skill that does not show that it is watch- 
ing. Those who condemn sentimental attach- 
ments most vehemently sometimes try to create 
an atmosphere of bracing athleticism, which 
is meant to prove fatal to sentiment and to 
romance. The girl may be entirely influenced 
by it at the time, but it is an unwise and ulti- 
mately an ineffective method of handling the 
situation, because it is based on the repression 
of a perfectly natural emotion. It is indeed 
only an attempt to transplant to a less con- 
genial soil a method which is only partially 
successful in boys' schools: the method of 
relying too exclusively on the effect of games 
and public opinion in safeguarding moral 
interests. It is a method which is perfectly 
sound and helpful as far as it goes, but it is 
useless to pretend that it goes all the way. 
Mr. Glutton Brock has pointed out that the 
boy's problem is partly created by the fact 
that his education does not give normal scope 
to his spiritual faculties. "Often the sexual 
instinct has a vast power over a boy's mind, 
because it means mystery and romance in a 
thoroughly prosaic world; and the world has 
become prosaic to him because all the desires 
of his spirit have been suppressed. He has 
learnt to care more for games and the approval 
of other boys than for truth or beauty, or even 

112 



Emotional Development: The Girl 

goodness. . . . But if his life before had not 
become unreal and second-hand, this reality 
would not be so enthralling to him." ^ We 
are not at the moment concerned to discuss the 
justice of this criticism in relation to any par- 
ticular type of school, but it is based on an 
undeniable truth which needs to be empha- 
sised at this point. It is that the problem is 
largely one of direction of interest. If the 
legitimate channels of interest approved by 
the school are too narrow, or too stereotyped, 
emotional energy is likely to spend itself un- 
wisely along other lines. Among these ap- 
proved interests, physical training will nor- 
mally rank very high; but if athleticism is 
too dominant, and if girls are not able to find 
adequate expression for the imaginative, crea- 
tive, intellectual and idealistic sides of their 
nature, then they may be inclined to take 
refuge from a prosaic world in the highly- 
coloured romance of a grande passion. 

It is very common to find women who have 
never passed beyond the homo-sexual phase 
of emotional development, or who have re- 
verted to it in later life. The preponderance 
of women among the population and the pres- 
ent social conditions have led to the view — 

1 A. Glutton Brock : The Ultimate Belief. Constable^ 
1916. p. 95. 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

certainly in the so-called upper stratum of 
society — that girls should be brought up to 
be independent of men, not only economically, 
but also emotionally. The whole idea of mar- 
riage and motherhood should be kept out of 
their minds as far as possible. This may be 
done by some without loss, but it is done by 
others at a very great price, as any clinical 
psychologist can tell. There are those who 
are incapable of shutting out of their minds 
the phantasy of marriage and motherhood, 
without replacing it by the reality of a homo- 
sexual attitude to life, which very frequently 
develops into active homo-sexuality. The in- 
ference drawn by some people is that modern 
conditions justify the existence of the homo- 
sexual type, and that it is only along these 
lines that many women to-day can attain to 
full self-expression. The present writer is 
unable to accept this view for two reasons, 
one sociological and one psychological. 

From the point of view of social evolution, 
the intermediate type is valueless : it is a devia- 
tion from the normal line of progress, which 
is found in the parental type, a side-tracking 
of the emotional forces. There are some 
psychologists who justify it solely on the 
grounds of the individual's liberty of self- 
expression. This view can only be held by 

114 



Emotional Development: The Girl 

regarding the individual as an isolated unit, 
and society as the aggregation of such units, 
an idea which cannot be co-ordinated v^^ith 
any known sociological conception. If we are 
to accept the fundamental fact that man is a 
gregarious animal, and that we live in, by and 
through society, then it must appear that there 
fare points at which individual liberty must 
fbe subordinated to the claims of society, and 
the demand for self-sacrifice becomes more 
insistent than the demand for self-expression. 
It has been argued that because so many 
women will go through life unmarried, it is 
therefore better to abandon all idea of educat- 
ing them for parenthood, and for the adjust- 
ment to the potential mate. From the point 
of view of the individual's immediate comfort 
and satisfaction, that may be quite true. If 
we bring up girls with the central idea that 
motherhood is the greatest blessing to be 
looked for, we need to do so realizing that 
this outlook on life may cause them a great 
deal of pain, if the riches of motherhood do 
not come their way; but that, in the interests 
of society, and of their own development, one 
is not entitled, for their individual comfort, 
to minimise the value of this point of view. 

From the point of view of psychological \ 
development, homo-sexuality in the adult is ; 

IIS 



The New Psychology aod the Teacher 

a regression. If the general scheme of the 
rotation of phases in the boy and the girl is 
accepted, this is a sufficiently obvious con- 
clusion. Clinical experience confirms the 
view that in the long run the man or woman 
of the intermediate type is bound to pay the 
price of regression, in one way or another. 
The unmanly man and the unwomanly woman 
who have branched off from the line of nor- 
mal emotional development in the search for 
self-expression, are apt to find that the path 
they had chosen, which looked so promising, 
has led them to a rather dreary wilderness. 

After giving a lecture on the subject of this 
chapter, the writer once received a letter from 
a member of the audience, who said that she 
was "haunted by the vision of a million 
women, immolated on the altar of society's 
welfare, in consequence of regarding their 
life work as of secondary importance." From 
the ages of eighteen to thirty- five, these 
women were pictured as "consciously seeking 
their mate," with disastrous results to their 
social efficiency. It was assumed that the ad- 
justment to the potential mate implied, ipso 
facto, a failure of adjustment to any circum- 
stances except the prospect of marriage. It 
is necessary to guard against this alarming 
possibility of misunderstanding. Actual mar- 

ii6 



Emotional Development: The Girl 

riage and motherhood remain as the typical 
opportunities of woman's self-realization; but 
it is impossible to maintain that they are the 
only opportunities. Self-realization is an 
achievement of character, rather than of cir- 
cumstance, and there are many unmarried 
v^omen who attain to it, and not a few marrie^ 
women who fail to do so. The writer's con- 
tention is that in either case there is the same 
need for the fundamental recognition of all 
that womanhood implies, and that this is the 
only secure basis alike for the direct expres- 
sion of the maternal and conjugal impulses in 
marriage, and for their sublimation in the 
service of the community. It is not the only 
basis, nor the easiest one. Psychological im- 
maturity — first intellectually and later emo- 
tionally — has long been preferred as the 
suitable basis for the unmarried woman's ad- 
justment to life. The nature of the psycho- 
logical and ethical situation which is thereby 
created will be discussed in later chapters.^ 
Adjustment on the basis of psychological ma- 
turity implies a more costly form of self- 
renunciation and a richer contribution to the 
service of society. 

It will seem to many people that the con- 

^ Chapter vf, "The Unconscious Motive," and chapter 
vii, "Mental Mechanisms." 

117 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

ception of the role of woman which has been 
put forward in this chapter is at bottom a re- 
actionary and a minimising view. It may be 
suspected of being part of that general tend- 
ency ''to think of man as being primarily a 
human being, with full human rights, and 
as being the normal type of the complete 
human being, and of woman as being 'prim- 
arily a mother,' and as having a 'peculiar 
contribution' to make in various directions."^ 
It will be remembered, however, that in the 
last chapter, so far from conceiving of man 
as a completely self-sufficient human being, 
it was maintained that his relation to women 
was a central factor in his emotional develop- 
ment. In this connexion the reader may be 
referred once more to the Parsifal myth, 
wherein it appears that Parsifal's qualifica- 
tion as a redeemer of society was ultimately 
dependent upon Kundry; and that without 
Kundry, who at first awakened him, and at 
last washed his feet, he could never have be- 
come fit for the task that he eventually per- 
formed. The man has to realize his manhood, 
and the woman her womanhood; and it is 
only so that each attains to the full stature of 
humanity. « 

^ "Some Aspects of the Woman's Movement," Student 
Christian Movement, p. 20i. 

ii8 



CHAPTER VI 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MOTIVE 



The Unconscious Motive the Central Fact for 
Analytical Psychology: 
Freud's original discovery. 

Example from War Material: 

Illustrating the twofold function of neurosis. 

The Unconscious Motive in the Individual and in 
the Community. 

The Neuroses of Peace Time : the Defence against 
Progress. 

Four Examples of the Working of the Uncon- 
scious Motive: 

The corporal in Egypt. 
The lady with insomnia. 
Mademoiselle X. 
Train phobia. 

The Unconscious Motive and Emotional Develop- 
ment. 



THE UNCONSCIOUS MOTIVE 

THE central fact for analytical psychology 
is the unconscious motive. This concep- 
tion we owe to the genius of Freud, who was 
led to it by his study of the phenomena of con- 
flict and repression. 

Freud's discoveries centred upon the uni- 
versal fact of conflict: the inevitable clash be- 
tween the primitive instincts and the demands 
of the herd. He realized that the appetite of 
the individual, biologically, must be at vari- 
ance with the ideals of the individual, socially 
and spiritually. And he saw that these con- 
flicts were most commonly treated on the 
principle of repression or suppression; that 
is, by an automatic or by a deliberate process 
of forgetting, ignoring, putting out of sight, 
one or other of the conflicting motives. He 
found that conventional morality was content 
not to probe further than this; and that it had 
invented its own psychology: the theory that 
if a primitive desire is denied expression it 
will gradually wither away and die. Freud 
set himself to follow the trail of defeated 
motive beyond this point, forging his own in- 

121 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

strument of the psycho-analytic method as he 
went. It led him into a new country, the dis- 
covery of which places him among the world's 
greatest pioneers. 

The mechanisms of conflict and repression 
will be discussed in a later chapter: we are 
at present concerned with the product of 
them, the repressed impulse, which exerts an 
unrecognized influence on conduct and be- 
haviour. How are we to conceive the general 
nature of the conflict? Those who seek a con- 
clusive answer to this question will find them- 
selves carried far into the regions of psycho- 
logical controversy, and perhaps beyond them. 
A part of the answer may be given in words 
not of science, but of art: "Neither his fel- 
lows, nor his gods, nor his passions will leave 
a man alone" ^ These elements not only come 
into conflict with one another, but may be 
themselves the centres of the conflict between 
regression and progress. The herd instinct 
sometimes makes conflicting demands upon 
the individual; the mythical warfare of the 
gods represents a real fact of subjective human 
experience; the primitive instincts and de- 
sires do not present a united front. It has 
already been shown, in discussing emotional 

^ Notes on Life and Letters, by Joseph Conrad. J. M. 
Dent & Sons. p. 19. 

122 



The Unconscious Motive 

development, how the biological urge towards 
completeness may come into conflict with 
Each of the primitive instincts is liable to 
conflict with the demands of the herd. Under 
conspicuous instance is the conflict between 
the instinct of procreation and the social code; 
but exactly the same phenomena of conflict 
and repression and neurosis have been ob- 
served in connexion with the other instincts. 
The effect of the unconscious motive may 
be shown reduced to its simplest terms in an 
illustration taken from the conflicts of war- 
time, centring upon the instinct of self-preser- 
vation. We will take the cases of three men, 
who shall be known as the sergeant, the cor- 
poral and the private. The sergeant is a man 
who is fully acquainted with his own motives. 
He is aware that he wants to join up, and that 
he will never be happy if he does not; but he 
is no less aware that he does not want to face 
death, mutilation, imprisonment, the prospect 
of leaving his family unprovided for, and all 



Psycfto/oo/c&/ 
pfyffe 

Ei-fuca/ 
p/s/fe 



Assoc/aAetf 
Adjushecf 




Private 




Sot &ssoc/8/vct Associaf-ed 

Incomp/efefyaa/us^cf Noi-ac/jusfecf 



123 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

the other risks involved in volunteering. With 
all these considerations clearly before him, he 
decides to go^ On the psychological plane he 
is fully associated: there are no relevant fac- 
tors that he is ignoring, no parts of his mental 
life that are insulated and not dynamic in his 
decision. On the ethical plane he is adjusted 
to the situation, for he has made the right 
moral choice. 

The private is also fully associated. He has 
been called up as a reservist or a conscript, 
and he knows that the fear of death and pain 
and loss count more heavily with him than 
the demands of patriotism. He has decided 
that he does not mean to go through with it. 
When he finds himself in the trenches, he soon 
appears before the medical officer, complain- 
ing of pains in his back. Medical treatment 
leaves his symptoms unaffected, and in course 
of time the patience of the medical officer is 
worn out. The man is sent to the casualty 
clearing station, thence to the base, and so to 
England, and a pension. His case was quite 
understood, and this was the only method that 
could be applied to it. He is the type that is 
psychologically associated, but not ethically 
adjusted. 

So far we are presented with a picture 
which is on the lines of the old morality, with 

124 



The Unconscious Motive 

its clear-cut distinction between the good man 
and the bad, and its definite choice between 
right and wrong. The case of the third man, 
the corporal, illustrates the effects of the un- 
conscious motive, its confusing and invali- 
dating influence on behaviour, regarded from 
the ethical standpoint. It cannot be judged 
on the basis of a morality which always pre- 
supposes complete responsibility for behav- 
iour, and makes no concessions for the people 
who act and do not know what they do. When 
the corporal saw the recruiting posters, he was 
terribly afraid, and for an instant he realized 
it, and knew the truth of his own mental situa- 
tion. It was impossible to face, and he forgot 
it as quickly and completely as possible. He 
was probably highly suggestible ; and when all 
his friends joined up, he went with them. He 
had a great deal more self-respect than the 
private ; he told himself that he was not afraid, 
and that he was going through with it. He 
kept up his spirits with plenty of whistling 
and cigarette-smoking, and other forms of ex- 
traversion which are adopted by people who 
dare not stop to face their own internal situa- 
tion. His patriotic motives were expressed and 
satisfied; his fears were put out of conscious- 
ness. He had made a quasi-adjustment on a 
wholly inadequate basis, and on this basis of 

125 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

repression and ignorance of his own motives, 
he went out to France. There were some men 
of his type who did not get as far as that. With 
some the insecure adjustment broke down at 
the first air-raid ; others had their first hystero- 
epileptic seizure literally when they set foot 
on French soil at Havre. Some got as far as 
the billets; some to the trenches, a few held 
out for six or nine months, but never much 
longer. 

We will suppose that the corporal reached 
the trenches, and that in course of time a shell 
burst near and buried both him and the ser- 
geant. Both were dug out, and brought to the 
casualty clearing station in about the same 
state of shell-shock. After a few days, the 
sergeant began to recover, and in time rejoined 
his unit. But at the end of a week the cor- 
poral was worse. His old symptoms remained, 
and new ones appeared. It was said officially 
that whereas the sergeant had had a mild at- 
tack of shell-shock, the corporal was having 
a severe one; but no one was ever able to ex- 
plain why it was that shell-shock should be- 
come progressively worse, when the man was 
removed from the lines, and sent to hospital. 
The explanation lay in the fact that these were 
cases of suffering, not from the physical eflfects 
of shell-concussion, but from war neuroses. 

126 



The Unconscious Motive 

The shock had broken down the corporal's 
quasi-adjustment. It had released the great 
dynamic of fear that he had hitherto been able 
to ignore. The apprehension of danger had 
been more or less successfully kept out of his 
consciousness ; but now that he had this definite 
experience of it, he knew that he could never 
forget it again. The repression on which his 
adjustment had been founded was broken up, 
and he realized vaguely that he could not go 
back to the trenches. Though he was not con- 
scious of it, an acute conflict had arisen within 
him. He could not escape it as the private 
had done, by simply "swinging the lead." 
Ethically, socially, morally, perhaps relig- 
iously, he was a higher type than the man who 
did not give himself a chance of a neurosis. 
When he was asked what he felt about rejoin- 
ing his unit, he invariably replied that if only 
his ''nerves" could be put right ''nothing 
would please him more than to have the 
chance of getting a bit of his own back from 
the Hun." In almost identical phraseology 
this has been said to the writer by countless 
patients suffering from war neuroses. They 
were perfectly ignorant of the fact that their 
"nerves" existed primarily to prevent them 
from getting anywhere near the Hun. The 

127 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

first function of every neurosis is defejice. The 
individual has to be defended from a situation 
that he conceives as intolerable. The symp- 
toms of the corporal are manufactured for a 
definite and imperative though entirely un- 
conscious reason: he has got to be preserved 
from going back to the trenches. But this is 
not all. The neurosis has a second, immensely 
important, function : it has to defend the indi- 
vidual from his own self-criticism; to con- 
vince him that he is not violating his accepted 
principles. The second function of every 
neurosis is deception. The corporal must still 
be blinded to his own fear. He must be de- 
ceived into thinking that his attitude is really 
that of the sergeant, and that it is only his 
" nerves " that stand in his way. Neurosis is 
the perfect instrument of compromise. 

It is a singularly blind judgment that would 
advance from the consideration of these facts 
to the conclusion that the corporal is only a 
malingerer after all; and that all he needs 
is to be told to pull himself together and go 
back to France. Uncomprehending censure 
and sentimental sympathy are equally in- 
appropriate in his condition; but this is 
not the final situation. When his case has 
been analysed, when he has been put in touch 

128 



The Unconscious Motive 

with the facts of his own mental life, when he 
has learnt to recognize his conflict and to face 
it in consciousness — then he can no longer 
remain the corporal, the compromise type: 
he has to make an ethical decision, and identify 
himself either with the sergeant or with the 
private. There were men in this position 
who made their ethical adjustment, and they 
had one's whole-hearted admiration; there 
were others who did not, and it was difficult to 
blame them. 

The case of the corporal has been chosen to 
show in simple and diagrammatic outline the 
primary principle of the unconscious motive 
at work. It is not intended as a conclusive 
statement on war-neuroses. 

The aim of psycho-analysis, stated in the 
briefest and crudest terms, is to reveal to the 
individual, from his own experience, the un- 
conscious motive that is at work in producing 
his neuroses. This is its primary concern; 
and much of the ill-repute which it has gained 
has been due to unnecessary emphasis on sec- 
ondary points. This is the real focus, not only 
of its therapeutic work, but of its whole con- 
tribution to social, religious and educational 
problems. The same mental mechanism which 
is at work in the individual is at work in the 

129 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

community. It is responsible for many myste- 
rious barriers to social progress/ No one 
erected them; everyone would be glad to be 
free of them, and to go on to better things; but 
they exist and remain, exerting an impersonal 
force, which seems to defy interference. The 
mechanism of defence and deception enables 
us to deplore results and disclaim responsibil- 
ity. When a society over-emphasizes in its 
conscious life the material and the primitive 
impulses, then the incalculable factor may be 
of the opposite kind ; and there appear sudden 
revivals and spiritual movements, which seem 
equally independent of human will and 
purpose. 

Both in the individual and in the social 
sphere the outlook of analytical-psychology 
is tending to enlarge the field of consciousness 
and of responsibility. The neurotic patient 
feels himself the victim of circumstances. His 
obsessions, phobia^, compulsions, inertia or 
physical symptoms: his neurosis, whatever 
form it takes, means to him a loss of freedom 
and of happiness; and this in itself proves to 

^ This idea is suggestively treated by Miss M. K. 
Bradby in both her books: Psycho-analysis and its Place 
in Life, and The Logic of the Unconscious Mind. Ox- 
ford Medical Publications. Hodder & Stoughton. 

130 



\The Unconscious Motive 

him that it is something that has come upon 
him against his will. It is only as he is 
brought to recognize the parts of his expe- 
rience and the dynamics of his life with which 
he has lost contact, that he comes to realize 
that his problem lies within his own persom- 
ality. Until he is thus re-associated, he can 
make no secure adjustment to the demands of 
life. It is by something more than a suggestive 
analogy that we find the parallel to this in the 
life of a nation.* There is the same tendency 
to repress and to ignore certain of the conflict- 
ing forces in society, and for these forces to 
gather power in the unconscious, and to exert 
an unrecognized and incalculable influence 
upon public affairs, producing all the phe- 
nomena of compulsion, fear and inertia, which 
hinder free action. They pass thus to the final 
stage, in which they are credited with an inde- 
pendent and highly concentrated existence. 
They are either deified as laws of life and force 
of circumstance, or personified in some notori- 
ous leader; or identified with a particular 
nation, party, or creed, a hidden hand, a mur- 

^ " Or do you imagine that constitutions grow upon 
a tree or rock, instead of springing out of the moral dis- 
positions of the members of each state ?" Plato, Republic. 
VIII. 544. 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

der gang, or an international plot. The ten- 
dency to externalize and objectify a problem 
is a characteristic of primitive thinking, and 
it is anachronism to which there is a constant 
temptation to return. Analytical-psychology 
re-afTirms the view that the most vital forces 
that influence human life enter it on the deeper 
levels, and are not imposed from without. The 
conception of the unconscious that is implied 
in this view is outlined briefly in the next 
chapter. Enough has been said to indicate the 
direction in which the new psychology is tend- 
ing to enlarge the sphere of responsibility. It 
is encroaching on the territory of determinism 
in two directions. On the one hand it shows 
that certain of the so-called "blind" forces 
which act destructively in the life of the in- 
! dividual and of the community, can be brought 
into relation with conscious control. On the 
other hand, it discredits that type of spiritual 
determinism which undcr-cstimates the indi- 
vidual's own part in the discovery of truth 
and moral good, and makes him dependent on 
an external authority and a magical solution. 
Both the depths and the heights of human 
achievement are the expression of a purpose 
and a will that is an integral part of man's 
mind, although it be no part of his conscious- 
ness : — 

132 



The Unconscious Motive 

"Our towns are copied fragments from our breast; 
And all man's Babylons strive but to impart 
The grandeurs of his Babylonian heart." * 

It was said that the unconscious motive, 
producing a neurosis, was invariably acting 
as a defence. In the case that was given, the 
corporal was being defended from having to 
risk his life in the trenches. If his situation 
be translated into the more ordinary condi- 
tions of peace-time, what demand for defence 
is there? Speaking in the most general terms, 
it is the tendency of the neuropath to defend 
himself against progress. One man's 
"trenches" have no terrors for another. The 
challenge of life asks different things of each 
individual. It may be marriage or celibacy, 
staying at home or going abroad, self-asser- 
tion or self-effacement: the problem takes 
countless different forms. Often the intol- 
erable situation against which the neurosis is a 
defence appears outwardly harmless and 
pleasant; and the victim of the neurosis ac- 
cepts other people's estimate of it, and is en- 
tirely unaware of his own resistance and fear. 
In general, however, these varied problems 
can be reduced to simple terms of the choice 
between growing up and remaining children: 

^ Correlated Greatness. Francis Thompson. 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

the choice between a progressive and a regres- 
sive reaction to life. In so far as progress 
means self-help, and in so far as self-help is 
incompatible with self-pity, it is obvious that 
the neurosis which gives an opportunity to 
self-pity is an effective barrier to progress. If 
a girl finds that she is not adequately appre- 
ciated, and that her social gifts or talents are 
not sufficient to make her the centre of atten- 
tion, she sometimes tends to develop a neu- 
rosis: it may take the form of headache and 
fatigue, or it may be something much more 
marked; stammering, or fits, or asthma. In 
the latter cases, any attempt to connect her 
symptoms with her mental attitude is naturally 
resented as being heartless and irrelevant. 
"She could not wish to have asthma like 
that," her mother will say; ''If you saw her 
sitting up wheezing all night, you would not 
for a moment believe that anyone could wish 
such a thing." In a sense this is perfectly 
true; and yet it is not the whole truth; for if 
there is anything clearly proved by analytical- 
psychology it is this: that the great funda- 
mental emotions of self-regard and self-pity 
will carry people to lengths hitherto undreamt 
of in the way of physical suffering; and that 
those who cannot get the limelight by ordinary 
means will wheeze for nights, and endure 

134 



The Unconscious Motive 

incj-edible discomfort and martyrdom to sat- 
isfy their desire for distinction. It is tempt- 
ing to pass from the first discovery of this 
principle to rapid and superficial conclusions 
about other people's neuroses, and to regard 
them vs^ith a certain contempt. The tempta- 
tion to adopt the attitude of patronage de- 
creases with further insight into the psycho- 
logical problems of other people, and more 
intimate and humiliating experience of the 
unconscious motive in oneself. The follow- 
ing examples are chosen as concrete and 
simple illustrations of what has been said of 
the operation of the unconscious motive 
through neurosis. 

The first is the case of a corporal (in both 
senses of the word) who was serving in Egypt, 
and was brought to the writer, suffering from 
insomnia and pains in the head. After a time 
I said to him that I supposed that, like the 
rest of us, he would not be sorry if he were 
sent home. He replied with every appear- 
ance of sincerity that he did not want this. 
He had come out with his own unit, and he 
wanted to stick to them; he thought that if 
he did get home, it would only be on the way 
to France, and he was better off where he was. 
I was completely convinced by him. On the 
following day I hypnotized him (he happened 

135 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

to be a very easy subject), and asked him 
what he wished for most in the world. He 
was told to write the answer. The usual 
trembling handwriting appeared: but it was 
perfectly legible. He had written the words: 
"Leave Egypt." His conscious attitude, repre- 
senting his ideal ego, was that of the yeoman 
in the desert. When he was shown the 
writing he could not believe that it was his 
own. It remained as the incontrovertible evi- 
dence of his repression. And when his case 
was examined further, it was found how much 
of himself had had to be repressed. He was a 
man of the clerk type, and musical and artistic. 
He was not a man of war. While his con- 
scious self clung to Egypt and his unit, his 
unconscious was calling him back to his 
mother and to Tooting. It would have done 
him no good to be told this without evidence. 
What did do him good was to be shown the 
proof that came from within himself in this 
unusually simple and direct manner. Through 
it, he was able to begin to get into contact with 
his own mind, and to understand why his ad- 
justment had broken down. 

The second case is that of a lady suffering 
from insomnia. She was about thirty, and 
had been married for four or five years. She 
had one child, a girl, who was about three 

136 



The Unconscious Motive 

years old. She was in good health, and could 
not account for her insomnia in any way. Fur- 
ther questioning revealed the following situa- 
tion. She had had an exceedingly serious 
time with her first confinement, and it had 
been a very terrifying experience. She had 
had some insomnia after it, and the titled con- 
sultant who was called in had given it as his 
opinion that there must be no question of 
another child until the insomnia was cured. 
It happened that there was an old peerage 
involved: and as the first child was a girl, it 
was necessary to face the prospect of a second 
confinement for the sake of having an heir. 
The compromise with the unconscious motive 
of fear was brought about by the continuance 
of her insomnia : for had not the great special- 
ist said that until this was cured there must 
be no thought of an heir? When it was ex- 
plained to her that she was unconsciously de- 
fending herself thus from her "trenches," she 
was very indignant; and the prophecy that her 
insomnia would cease as soon as an heir was 
on the way was very coldly received. Not 
very long afterwards, however, she wrote to 
say that it had been fulfilled; and subse- 
quently the heir arrived. 

A more complex situation was found to un- 
derlie the continuance of a symptom in 

137 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

another case. It was that of a lady with bad 
tonsilitis. She was brought into a nursing 
home, and had her tonsils removed. Her de- 
voted husband, who was a good deal older 
than she was, did everything that he could 
think of to add to her comfort. In order to 
stimulate her recovery, he bethought him of 
a plan, which should prove immensely at- 
tractive to her. He proposed that as soon as 
she was better, they should go ofif to Paris, and 
stay with a certain Mademoiselle X. It was 
all arranged, and she must get well quickly. 
But the patient only got worse. Specialists 
and consultants could find no adequate phys- 
ical cause for her condition, and at last she 
had recourse to psychotherapy. The explana- 
tion of her inability to get well was as fol- 
lows: Many years ago there had been a great 
friendship between the patient and Made- 
moiselle X., a certain French musician. The 
patient was herself musical and erotic; she 
was enthralled and captivated by Made- 
moiselle X., and a homo-sexual attachment 
grew up between them. At length it dawned 
upon her husband that this friendship had 
reached a point at which it was impossible for 
him to approve of it; and he turned Made- 
moiselle X. out of the house. The intimacy 
was entirely broken ofif, and though there was 

■38 



The Unconscious Motive 

some soreness at the time, the patient after- 
wards thought of Mademoiselle X. with dis- 
gust and remorse and real loathing. During 
her illness, the husband, casting around for 
something that should gratify her, determined 
that she should be invited by him to see her 
friend again, as a sign of his complete forgive- 
ness and confidence that the whole episode 
could be safely forgotten. The wife was 
aware that she could not face the affair with 
anything like detachment. The plan which 
was to have given her a motive for recovery 
had exactly the opposite effect. A neurosis 
often means the choice of physical suffering 
instead of mental suffering; and in this case 
the lady had unconsciously preferred the con- 
tinuance of her symptoms to the facing of a 
painful emotional situation. 

The last case is that of a man of rather wild 
business methods, who was in the habit of 
speculating — not always with his own money. 
He was enjoying a lively Christmas holiday 
at Southport, when on New Year's Day he 
received a telegram from his office to say that 
his investments had collapsed, and that he 
must return to town at once, and face the situa- 
tion. (It involved bankruptcy.) He took the 
first train to Liverpool, and was waiting at 
Lime Street for the London express. When 

139 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

it came, he could not get into it. He let it go, 
and waited for the next train. This was no 
better. He walked along it from the engine 
to the guard's van, and there was no point 
at which he could persuade himself to set foot 
in it. The last train at night he did get into 
with a supreme effort, and so got to town, 
much later than he was expected, and faced 
the unpleasant realities of the situation. But 
his neurosis pursued him. He could not travel 
on the underground; or rather, he could only 
do so if he got in and out at one of three sta- 
tions, not one of which was any use to him, 
either for his business or his home. The orig- 
inal cause of the neurosis was so obvious and 
transparent that it could hardly have cheated 
anybody: it was just a defence against the fear 
of facing the auditor and his own books. But 
this ordeal had to be gone through: in time it 
was all over, and he could start again; and 
yet the train-phobia remained with him — for 
what purpose? It remained as a defence 
against his own self-criticism, to conceal him 
from the real facts of his failure to arrive 
promptly on the day of the crisis. If it had 
disappeared after this occasion, he would 
have had to face his own moral cowardice 
without deception. As it was, he was able to 
regard himself as the victim of "nerves," 

140 



The Unconscious Motive 

which so far from being of any use to him, 
were simply a hindrance to his desire to get 
on with his work. He was obliged to go to 
his office by taxi, and he was accompanied by 
his wife. In his refusal to face the demands 
of life, he was regressing to the position of 
dependence on the mother. 

The conception of the unconscious motive, 
producing the neurosis as a defence against 
progress must be related to the whole question 
of the emotional development of the boy and 
girl. The neuroses of childhood and adoles- 
cence bear witness to the fact that the menace 
of growing up is a very much more real thing 
than many of us remember or ever recognized. 
Few of us have the genius of a Stevenson to 
recapture at will the outlook of youth, and 
to see its fears and embarrassments in their 
original dimensions. We may, however, gain 
some insight into these difficulties by the ex- 
perience of conflict with our own incurable 
puerility, the unconscious motive of regres- 
sion, which continually seeks to defend us 
from the intolerable situation, and to cheat 
us into the belief that we are not really 
shirking. 



141 



CHAPTER VII 
MENTAL MECHANISMS 



Psychological Typks: 

The introvert and the cxtravert. 

rni' Unconscious: 

The Conceptions of Freud and of Jung. 
The Censor. 

Mkntal Mi:cHANiSMs: 

Repression and suppression. 

Coni|tlex-forniati(»n. 

Translerence of the affect. 

Suhliniation. 

Compensation. 

Projection. 

Rationalization. 

RliC.RESSION'. 



MENTAL MECHANISMS 

T?OR practical purposes it is well to be 
-■■ familiar with the conception of the two 
main psycholoj^ical types, distinguished by 
Jung, in his original classification: namely, 
those of the introvert and the extravert. It is 
obvious that any distinction of this kind is no 
more than a rough division; there are many 
intermediate types; but even so, it is useful 
to recognize the two diflferent strains in the 
mental make-up. 

The extravert type is characterized by self- 
confidence, usually in excess of what is justifi- 
able, and by facility of self-expression. The 
extravert is self-seeking in the broadest sense 
of the word; that is to say, he is not neces- 
sarily seeking his own ends selfishly, but he 
is anxious to feel the eflFect of his actions and 
ideas upon other people. To this type belong 
the propagandists of the world, the people 
who desire to see the rest of mankind sharing 
their particular views. To this type also 
belong all successful commercial travellers 
and auctioneers, men and women with the 
objective outlook and the strong practical 

145 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

initiative that gets things done. The intro- 
vert is of the opposite type. He is apt to be 
unduly lacking in self-confidence and in the 
power to express himself; ready to think, 
rather than to act; unwilling to push himself 
forward. He is generally content to be aloof 
and detached ; to experience sympathy and 
pity for the world that does not share his 
views, without making any attempt to remedy 
the disaster. An emotional situation which 
stimulates the extravert depresses the intro- 
vert : he does not know how to express his feel- 
ings, and so tries to ignore them. The two 
types are clearly distinguished also by their 
reaction to the limelight: the extravert is in- 
variably attracted by it, and responds to its 
stimulus; the introvert as invariably shuns it, 
and is at his best when he is protected from it. 
Their reaction to opportunity is also char- 
acteristic: to the introvert it presents itself 
first as responsibility; to the extravert as a 
chance of scope. It is only on second thoughts 
that the introvert realizes that the post that 
has been offered him does present possibilities 
of scope for his powers, and the extravert be- 
comes apprehensive about the burden of its 
responsibilities. Jung has more recently re- 
placed this classification by another based on 
the four functions of feeling, thinking, intui- 

146 



Mental Mechanisms 

tion and sensation. He has boldly made use 
of the word "function," despite its unpopu- 
larity with the modern psychologist. 

He distinguishes thus the rational, logical 
type : the impulsive, rash, enthusiastic feeling 
type: the intuitive type, arriving at conclu- 
sions often with far greater certainty than the 
thinker, but on the most slender logical 
grounds: and the sensational type, always 
craving for stimulus to the sensory experience 
— the cigarette-smoking, chocolate-eating, 
cocktail-drinking type, that is responsible 
for much of the alcoholism in the coun- 
try. This classification is valuable ; but it does 
not detract from the usefulness of the simpler 
division into the two types. The latter is par- 
ticularly important In dealing with children, 
for two reasons. In the first place, extraver- 
sion is characteristic of normal childhood. 
The process of development should include a 
gradual transition to Introversion. It is im- 
portant to realize that there is something 
wrong with the small child who is unduly 
introverted, and lacks facility for self-expres- 
sion; and something wrong also with the ado- 
lescent and the adult who have made no prog- 
ress to the development of the thought-life, 
who are regressing to the more infantile state 
of conduct and expression. Secondly, along- 

147 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

side of this general distinction between the ex- 
traversion characteristic of childhood, and the 
more introverted attitude of maturity, the in- 
dividual tendency of the child has to be con- 
sidered. The predominantly introvert or ex- 
travert type can be distinguished in very early 
childhood; and it should be part of the func- 
tion of education to help the individual to 
develop that side of himself which is naturally 
the weaker. The two types require very dif- 
ferent handling; and much harm can be done 
by making the way of self-expression too hard 
for the introvert child, or encouraging the ex- 
travert to over-facility and display. 

It may be well at this point to draw atten- 
tion to the double meaning of self-conscious- 
ness in children. It may be congenital : the 
natural reaction to life of the primary sen- 
sitive type. In this case it will be continuously 
present from a very early age. It may, on the 
other hand, be acquired. The self-conscious- 
ness that suddenly appears in the child of five 
or six has a perfectly definite cause, and is 
recognizable as the typical result of a shame- 
complex based on auto-erotic practices. The 
phenomena of self-consciousness are much the 
same in the two cases; but the underlying dis- 
tinction is fundamental. 

We pass from this to consider very briefly 
148 



Mental Mechanisms 

some of the most important mental mechan- 
isms that have been recognized by modern 
psychology. The reader should perhaps be 
reminded that these mechanisms are purely 
conceptual: they are psychological assump- 
tions which have been found necessary to ex- 
plain and to correlate certain facts of mental 
experience; but they cannot be directly ob- 
served as mental phenomena, and they are 
perfectly distinct from any physiological 
mechanism of the brain.^ 

The most important of these conceptions is 
that of the unconscious. On this point the 
views of Freud and Jung are irreconcilable. 
The unconscious is conceived by Freud as sec- 
ondary and personal : a store-room, whose con- 
tent is recruited from the individual's own 
experience. This experience includes the 
ante-natal life, which is responsible for the 
first storing of the unconscious. This assump- 
tion is made to cover the fact that children 
dream at an early age of sexual phenomena of 
which they cannot have had any conscious 
experience. In a criticism of the original 
Freudian view. Dr. Maurice Nicoll has sum- 
marized it by saying that "this kind of uncon- 
scious is like a cage opening off the main liv- 

* For this distinction see Bernard Hart : The Psychol- 
ogy of Insanity. Cambridge University Press, p. i6 if. 

149 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

ing-room of consciousness into which we put 
the things that have become dangerous." ^ 
The unconscious is secondary, in that it con- 
tains material, all of which has once been a 
part of experience: it is the product of re- 
pression. 

To Jung, the unconscious is primary and 
racial. He conceives of it as partially stored 
with material which is hereditary. This col- 
lective unconscious is expressed in racial sym- 
bols, folk-lore and myth-making tendencies, 
which are common to mankind. The original 
racial content is added to by repression and 
the other mental mechanisms which control 
the selection and limitation of the contents 
of the conscious mind. On this view the 
unconscious is conceived primarily as the 
source of psychic energy. In the relation be- 
tween the conscious and the unconscious, the 
chief dynamic is an upward movement: the 
emergence of fresh material from deeper 
levels of the psyche. On the Freudian view 
the chief dynamic appears to be regarded 
rather as a downward push from conscious- 
ness, followed by the inevitable impulse of 

^ Pf^hy is the " Unconscious " unconscious? Contri- 
bution to a Symposium at a Joint Session of the British 
Psycholoj;;ical Society, the Aristotelian Society and the 
Mind Association, July 6, 191 8. 

150 



Mental Mechanisms 

reaction, the tendency of the repressed ma- 
terial to reappear in consciousness. 

The two schools differ thus radically in the 
view they take of the way in which the con- 
tent of the unconscious is formed; they differ 
no less in the conception of its quality. To 
the Freudian school the unconscious material 
is necessarily that which is antagonistic to 
conscious thought, and opposed to ethical and 
social ideals. It is the force of primitive 
desire, the menagerie of wild beasts which 
have to be kept from contact with the more 
civilized life of consciousness. The opposing 
forces of morality and social restraint have 
no stronghold in the unconscious; but belong 
to the conscious and acquired tradition of 
man. The Zurich school conceives of the un- 
conscious as containing in itself both elements, 
the primitive and bestial and the sublime and 
godlike. It finds the human conflict inborn 
in the deepest recesses of the psyche. One of 
the implications of this view may be crudely 
represented by a diagram, in which the con- 
tents of the mind are arranged conceptually 
on a scale. At one end of the scale are the 
heroic and sublime elements, and at the other 
the primitive and bestial. A curved line rep- 
resents the threshold of consciousness. The 
ideas that belong to the extreme ends of the 

151 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

scale meet with a strong resistance to their 
entry into consciousness. The resistance is 
at its lowest in the middle of the scale to 
which belong neutral ideas; ordinary interests 
of work and play, clothes and holidays, people 
and things that arouse no mental conflict. 
These may sink down into the unconscious, 
but they can be easily recalled. This is not 
so with the ideas that are fraught with poten- 
tial conflict. There is a strong and automatic 
resistance to their emergence into conscious- 



Pnmfff¥e 
aacfdes/JB/ 




Co(f//Ae and 
sufi//me 



ness. Our primitive biological tendencies, 
our sex life in particular, meets with this 
opposition. It is too highly charged with 
emotion and with the possibilities of conflict 
for it to appear freely above the threshold of 
consciousness. This truth has been strongly 
emphasized in psycho-analysis. The corre- 
sponding truth implied in Jung's conception 
of the twofold nature of the unconscious is less 
generally recognized. It is that the opposi- 
tion is equally strong at the other, end of the 
scale. The ideas that are associated with the 

152 



Mental Mechanisms 

highest adjustment to the ideal, the greatest 
challenge to growth and spirituality, also meet 
with resistance. The same mechanism with- 
holds them from the easy entry into conscious- 
ness. It is obvious that the difference between 
the two conceptions of the unconscious has 
far-reaching implications, which affect the 
whole psychological outlook. 

The Freudian psychology postulates the 
existence of a censor, who checks the material 
that passes from the unconscious to the 
conscious. The personal pronoun is used 
advisedly; in all systems of psychology and 
philosophy which de-personalize the ego 
there is a tendency to attribute personality to 
something else. Freud now conceives that 
there are two censors, and both appear to the 
writer to perform a strictly personal function 
within the impersonal ego of a deterministic 
theory. Jung has discounted the function of 
the censor, and is not a determinist; but he 
seems to attribute free-will to the conscious 
self rather grudgingly, and tends rather to 
personify the unconscious. 

In the previous chapter ^ a reference was 
made to the tendency to evade conflict by 
repression, or suppression. The latter term 
is usually applied to the conscious, and the 

^ V. supra, p. 127. 

IS3 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

former to the automatic part of the process 
of excluding an idea from consciousness. 
Repression often presupposes a moment of 
time, however brief, in which the unwelcome 
idea is voluntarily thrust away from attention, 
and the element of deliberate volition may 
from time to time be present again. More 
frequently it is entirely absent. The idea that 
has become painful to the conscious mind is 
surrounded by a group of kindred ideas: it is 
the centre of a constellation. In the example 
that was given in the last chapter it may be 
supposed that the central idea of the fear of 
death was surrounded in the corporal's mind 
by various associations and mental pictures: 
stories of suffering and mutilation, ideas about 
imprisonment and hunger and disease. For a 
brief space these produced a mental disposi- 
tion or constellation of ideas in his conscious 
mind; and then they were ignored. The 
group of ideas continued to exist in his uncon- 
scious, forming what is known as a complex. 
While it was possible for the corporal to re- 
press all direct thoughts of his fear, it was 
inevitable that he should come in contact with 
some of the kindred ideas that were associated 
with it. However remote the connexion, 
these ideas would be coloured with the feel- 
ing-tone of the repressed complex, and he 

154 



Mental Mechanisms 

would be unable to think of them without an 
emotional reaction that was out of proportion 
to their ordinary significance. It is a very 
common observation of everyday life to notice 
that things which appear of slight impor- 
tance may provoke a disproportionate amount 
of emotion. It is these subjects on which we 
are "touchy" that indicate complexes. They 
are the occasion of a release of repressed emo- 
tion. This mental mechanism lies at the root 
of all bias, all injustice, and all inability to 
think clearly. 

There is a second mechanism that belongs 
to the process of repression. The emotion 
which accumulates in connexion with the re- 
pressed complex tends to escape into con- 
sciousness. The direct outlet is barred by 
repression. The emotional effect may find its 
way through some of the ideas which lie as 
it were on the fringe of the complex, in the 
way that has been described; but this is an 
inadequate outlet. Under these circum- 
stances, there is a tendency for it to travel yet 
farther from the original idea, and to make 
its way into consciousness by becoming at- 
tached to some apparently irrelevant object. 
This mechanism of the transference of the 
affect can be made clear by an example. 

In 191 5 a patient came to me suffering from 

155 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

an irrational anxiety about all that concerned 
her children. They were hedged in with the 
most elaborate precautions and restrictions. 
The patient realized that her behaviour with 
regard to them was quite unreasonable, but 
she was unable to alter it. The children were 
perfectly healthy and normal, and presented 
no cause for anxiety. After getting her con- 
scious estimate of this part of her situation, I 
inquired about her husband. He was a 
colonel in a front-line regiment. I sym- 
pathized with her anxious position. She re- 
plied at once that she was not in the least 
anxious: she had a presentiment that he would 
come back all right. In 1915 such presenti- 
ments were hardly plausible. What had hap- 
pened was that she had found herself totally 
unable to face the possibility of his death; it 
was unendurable, and she thrust it out of con- 
sciousness, making a false adjustment to the 
situation on the basis of phantasy: the ''pre- 
sentiment" that he would come back all right. 
From this repression the affect of anxiety was 
transferred to an irrelevant object: it attached 
itself to the idea of her children. Events con- 
firmed this diagnosis. Ten days later the hus- 
band was killed, and from that moment the 
neurosis disappeared. The repression was at 
an end; the intolerable possibility which she 

156 



Mental Mechanisms 

had been evading had become a reality with 
which she was obliged to come into contact. 
The mental mechanisms which have been 
described represent the analytical view of re- 
pression and complex-formation. It is some- 
times asked whether the new psychology 
offers any positive solution to the problems it 
reveals. To this it may be replied that the 
first function of analytical psychology is to 
reveal the problem and to establish the basis 
of self-knowledge which is the necessary pre- 
liminary to ethical decision. When the 
corporal of our former example discovers his 
own situation, his problem, strictly speaking, 
passes out of the realm of psychology into the 
domain of ethics. On the other hand, there 
is no reason to limit the sphere of psychology 
to the study of pathological states : it is equally 
concerned to understand the processes of suc- 
cessful adaptation to life. Among these the 
^mechanism of sublimation plays an important 
part. A neurosis may have been traced to a 
repression of an unconscious motive of a 
primitive and anti-social nature, for which 
the conditions of the patient's life provide no 
legitimate channel of expression. What 
then? An alternative to the neurosis may be 
sought in the fearless disregard of the claims 
of society, and the free expression of the in- 

157 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

stinct. This course has been sometimes advo- 
cated and tried. It has been found, however, 
that apart from the effects upon society, it is 
not a satisfactory solution from the point of 
view of the individual. It does not lead to 
permanent self-harmony. It is, in fact, only 
another form of the attempt to settle the con- 
flict by ignoring one of the opposing forces. 
The solution of the problem lies along the 
line of sublimation, which means, briefly, the 
indirect expression of an instinctive emotion 
in some cognate manner that is socially use- 
ful. Sublimation involves restraint, but not 
repression. On the contrary, it is only pos- 
sible on a basis of conscious recognition of 
both factors in the conflict. Freud lays stress 
on the essential demand for sublimation as a 
means of social progress; but his theory of 
the unconscious leads him to associate subli- 
mation with the process of repression. In a 
recent account of the Freudian theory it is 
stated that "It is not conceivable that man- 
kind should exist and evolve without repres- 
sion, since sublimation must continue to be a 
path from the egocentric to the social life. 
. . ." ^ It is also maintained that the forma- 
tion of the complex "results from a damming 

^Barbara Low: An Outline of Psycho-analysis. 
George Allen and Unwin. p. 90. 

158 



Mental Mechanisms 

of the psychic energy accompanying the pro- 
found primitive impulses, which remain un- 
discharged owing to the checks imposed by 
the sublimating forces." ^ In the present 
chapter the term sublimation is applied rather 
to the release of psychic energy by the indirect 
expression of the primitive impulse. One of 
the clearest examples of this process is the 
experience of the woman who sublimates her 
maternal instinct in the work of nursing. 
Efifective sublimation needs to be closely re- 
lated to the primitive impulse in order that 
the maximum amount of energy may be avail- 
able. It must also take a form that is socially 
valuable. The conflict between the social 
and the anti-social impulses is resolved, not 
by the identification of the ego with one side 
to the exclusion of the other, but by the at- 
tempt to recognize both, and express both 
along a single line of action. Such a process 
leads ultimately to self-harmony and positive 
gain to the personality; but, like other forms 
of progress, it implies a definite element of 
sacrifice and renunciation. 

One of the mental mechanisms that becomes 
most apparent through analysis is that of com- 
pensation. In particular there is a universal 

^ An Outline of Psycho-analysts, p. 87. 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

tendency to compensate for the things that 
produce a sense of inferiority — personal de- 
fects, whether they be mental or physical, 
social or educational — by an equivalent em- 
phasis on superiority. We instinctively turn 
away from the contemplation of our failures 
and fix our attention on some more agreeable 
prospect, real or imaginary. People who are 
uneasy about their social position are notori- 
ously the most conscious of their superiority 
to what they consider a lower class of society. 
People who have a dim sense that their gen- 
eral intellectual position will not stand close 
scrutiny are the loudest in defending some 
part of it with impassioned certainty. Jung 
has said that in general "Extremes of con- 
duct always arouse suspicions of the opposite 
tendencies in the unconscious." ^ 

An instance of this may be given from the 
experience of a patient who came for treat- 
ment because he was suffering from a neurosis 
of uncertainty. He could not shut a door or 
turn out the gas without going back to make 
sure if he had really done it. There was, 
however, a further factor in his case to catch 
the clinical imagination: he had written a 

^ Analytical Psychology, by Dr. C. G. Jung, Bailliere, 
Tindall & Cox, 191 7. 

160 



Mental Mechanisms 

number of extraordinarily second-rate tracts, 
and he distributed them by the hundred 
thousand. Further inquiry revealed that as 
soon as he saw that a man was condemned to 
be hanged he would write to the prison chap- 
lain, offering to visit the man. He was in 
fact a religious propagandist of a perfectly 
untamed character. When the patient was 
seen and his case examined, it was found that 
there had been an extremely lurid period in 
his life. He was very angry at having to 
make this revelation, and said that he had 
never told anybody else about it; but then 
nobody else had wanted to know. It was im- 
possible not to suspect that the indiscriminate 
distribution of tracts was not due to an or- 
dinary spiritual mechanism, but had a patho- 
logical origin. The man had a tremendous 
sense of shame, a guilt-complex that coloured 
his whole life. He was trying to compensate 
for it every hour of the day; but, instead of 
dealing directly with his problem, he pro- 
jected it and externalized it. He had the idea 
of atoning for his own past sins by an un- 
paralleled activity in saving the souls of other 
people. Behind this idea lay the mechanism 
of compensation. While he was addressing 
tracts to people condemned to be hanged, he 
was enjoying a certain amount of relief from 

i6i 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

contemplating his own lurid past, and his 
own merits of sharing the same fate. He was 
able to think of himself, not in terms of in- 
feriority and guilt, but with the emotions of 
superiority and pity. 

There is no cynicism in the suggestion that 
the mechanism of compensation may account 
for activities that seem to be inspired by re- 
ligious enthusiasm. If there is any real faith 
and any vital religion, it must assuredly be 
based on the conception that motive is every- 
thing. When the motive will not bear exami- 
nation, there is nothing to lose by leading the 
individual to discover it, and to see his action 
in its true colours. 

The deceptive mechanism known as projec- 
tion has just been referred to. All human 
beings without exception have the tendency 
to project on to their environment, their rela- 
tions and their friends, the responsibility for 
things that have gone amiss in their own lives. 
This mechanism is an effective instrument of 
the unconscious motive, and has already been 
touched upon in that connexion.^ It was 
shown how the neurotic patient tends to evade 
the responsibility for his problem, and to look 
for it in circumstances rather than in his own 

* V. supra, pp. 128, 141. 
162 



Mental Mechanisms 

psychological situation. It is a tendency that 
belongs to the unconscious way of thought, 
and it is constantly appearing in dreams. It 
is in fact inherent in the very nature of the 
dream as an objectified statement of an indi- 
vidual problem. The dreamer often finds 
himself bearing the responsibility for an 
action in the shape of some other person. An 
example may be taken in the dream of a 
woman, who had drifted into a very feeble, 
meaningless sort of life through lack of reso- 
lution. Her parents were people of a differ- 
ent character, and if she had managed to live 
up to their ideals she might have acquired 
more backbone and strength of mind. She 
dreamt that she was trying to cross a road 
after her mother. The road was full of traffic, 
and when she had got across her mother went 
back. She was in great distress. The dream 
went on: "After I had been crying some 
time, my mother appeared as a little girl in a 
short frock." In her dream she is shown as 
laying the responsibility for her desolate 
plight upon her mother, who has deserted 
her, and gone back to the wrong side of the 
road. But the figure who goes back is herself, 
and the little girl is again herself, her own 
infantile personality. The beginning of the 
dream shows the projection of her problem 

163 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

on to her mother ; and then comes the dramatic 
ending. It is you who have gone back, and 
not your mother at all. The little girl, the 
pitiable child, is you. 

Through a study of the tendencies to com- 
pensation and to projection in dreams where 
they appear unchecked by rationality, it is 
possible to arrive at a better estimate of their 
influence in waking life. The impulse to 
rationality in the conscious mind excludes the 
cruder possibilities of deception by these men- 
tal mechanisms. At the same time, it often 
acts as an ally, and clothes the primitive 
thought in a garment that enables it to pass 
unchallenged. By the process of rationaliza- 
tion the thoughts and actions that have been 
prompted by a motive that the conscious self 
is unwilling to recognize are explained and 
justified on grounds that satisfy the demands 
of reason and self-approval. 

Most of the mental mechanisms that have 
been touched upon belong primarily to the 
unconscious levels of thought. As such, they 
need to be recognized and detected ; for they 
are the signs of the unconscious motive, un- 
related to the conscious purpose. The man 
or woman who has to bring the clumsy meth- 
ods of an adult mind to bear upon the sensitive 
fabric of the growing child or adolescent may 

164 



Mental Mechanisms 

well try to guard against any unnecessary 
sources of self-deception and bias. The 
tendency to slip back into the methods of 
primitive thought besets both the adult and 
the child with a life-long persistency. There 
is no escaping the truth of the Frenchman's 
aphorism: "Grattez Vadulte et vous y trou- 
verez Venfant." The teacher who is to exer- 
cise to the full his powers of helping the child 
in his development, needs above all to under- 
stand the regressive tendency in himself, and 
to be facing his own problem of progress. 



165 



CHAPTER VIII 
DREAM SYMBOLISM 



Limitations to the Validity of Dream Interpreta- 
tion. 

Common Sources of Difficulty: 

Dreams and digestion. 

Confusion of the manifest and the latent con- 
tents. 

Racial and personal symbols — dreams, myths 
and obsessions. 

The Amateur Interpreter: 

Dangers of interpreting other people's dreams. 
Advantages of studying one's own. 

Sexual Symbolism in: 

Repression of the sex instinct. 
Character in terms of sex symbols. 

Examples of Racial and General Symbols: 
Right and Left. 
The Self and the Not-Self. 
Bridges, Cross-roads, and Rivers to cross. 

Dream of religious propagandist. 
Earth, Air, Water. 

Myth of Europa and Cadmus. 
Houses and rooms. 
Numbers. 

An obsession and two dreams. 
Forms of locomotion. 

The Colonel on stilts. 

The narrow-gauge railway. 
Animals. 
Teeth. 
Death and Re-birth. 

Margate Pier. 

Jung's interpretation. 



DREAM SYMBOLISM 

TN previous chapters frequent use has been 
^ made of dream-material. The interpreta- 
tions given will have seemed to some readers 
far-fetched and difficult, and they w^ill feel 
it a dangerous thing to draw conclusions for 
life and conduct from evidence that appears 
so shadowy and uncertain. So it is; and the 
recognition of this fact is a more promising 
preliminary to the study of dreams than an 
attitude of uncritical assurance. Dream in- 
terpretation has advanced by the ordinary 
scientific method of empiricism — the observa- 
tion and collection of facts, from the classifica- 
tion of which arise conceptions which can be 
applied to resume, and to some extent to pre- 
dict, further phenomena of the same nature. 
This method has given valuable results; but 
it has not reached a point at which dogmatic 
certainty is justified. This is due not only to 
the circumstance that the analytical method of 
dream interpretation is still of very recent 
origin: it is also inherent in the nature of the 
method itself. This will become clearer as 
the various difficulties are discussed. 

169 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

There Is a popular theory which accounts 
for dreams — and particularly for the fantastic 
and distorted elements of them by the simple 
fact of physical derangement: "How can 
you expect me to take my dreams seriously, 
when I know they are the result of eating 
Welsh rabbit for supper?" An analogy will 
explain this difficulty. Imagine a bay, show- 
ing at high-tide a certain contour, certain 
rocks and islands. This corresponds to our 
waking consciousness. The normal dream- 
level of consciousness is represented by low- 
tide : a different contour is seen. At the neap- 
tide the water falls lower than at any other 
time, and thus falling it reveals rocks and 
islands which had been unknown before. It 
reveals these new features, but it does not 
cause them : they have always been there. If 
by a dietetic indiscretion I influence the cir- 
culation of my brain, there is no doubt that 
my dreams will be more vivid, more terrify- 
ing, more exaggerated than any I have had on 
previous nights, when my digestion was in 
good condition. But this physical disturbance 
has not produced the psychological conflict: 
it has only revealed it in an intensified and 
exaggerated form. 

The manifest content of a dream may sug- 
gest a certain meaning; but further investiga- 

170 



Dream Symbolism 

tion may reveal a latent content, which has 
quite another meaning. The failure to dis- 
tinguish the manifest from the latent content 
lies at the back of a common objection to 
dream interpretation: "My dreams can^t 
have any meaning, because I always dream 
of what I have been doing the day before.'* 
While there is no question that the material 
of the dream is often taken from recent experi- 
ence, this observation will not often account 
fully for the form taken by the dream. There 
is frequently some curious distortion or addi- 
tion to the picture, which suggests that it has 
not merely been "photographically lined on 
the tablet of my mind." In a dream of cor- 
recting examination papers at the end of 
term some odd irrelevancy may be introduced : 
"The curious thing was that I seemed to be 
doing it in the school chapel" — or — "That 
the papers were written by people I know at 
home." This familiar characteristic of the 
dream makes it necessary to find some further 
explanation for the selection of the manifest 
content. 

When the symbolic interpretation of dreams 
is accepted as a hypothesis, a further difficulty 
arises. We will suppose that the dreamer sees 
himself on a railway line. A train is coming 
towards him at full speed. Just as it is going 

171 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

to run over him, he manages to drag himself 
out of the way. From the manifest content 
it is evident that the dreamer is represented 
as being in very serious danger; and it would 
be possible to go on with a general symbolic 
interpretation, in which the engine would 
appear as the driving force of his life. If 
the dreamer had no personal association with 
the elements of the dream, it might be assumed 
that they bore this general symbolic mean- 
ing. On the other hand, the railway line 
might recall to him some particular incident 
in his own life; and these personal associa- 
tions would at once give the dream a specific 
meaning for the dreamer, which would be 
more important than its general meaning. In 
working out the value of dreams it is soon 
found that some of the symbols are in the 
current coin or treasury notes of accepted 
value, while others are in the form of cheques, 
crossed, and strictly not negotiable. 

The dream deals with the problem of the 
individual in an objective form. Because it 
deals with the individual, the subjective factor 
is always of great importance, and invalidates 
any attempt to interpret the dream solely on 
the basis of a fixed standard of values. Be- 
cause it deals with the problem in an objecti- 
fied form, it uses primitive forms of thought 

172 



Dream Symbolism 

— symbols which belong to man's first at- 
tempts to objectify the abstract. Dreams and 
myths have a common origin, and the ancient 
symbols of mythology — the serpent, the fruit, 
the bull, the king and queen, these and others 
are appearing night after night in the dreams 
of modern people. The language of an indi- 
vidual's obsessions or phobiae is, in like man- 
ner, an objective expression of his problem. 
The commonest obsession that the layman is 
acquainted with is probably the "washing 
mania." People with a compulsion neurosis 
of this kind are only working out in symboli- 
cal form their own psychological situation: 
the washing represents the claim of the uncon- 
scious for the solution of a guilt-complex, 
which has never been resolved. 

It is not possible, in one chapter, to do more 
than touch the fringe of the subject of the in- 
terpretation of dreams. It may be thought 
that any attempt to treat the subject in a popu- 
lar form is misguided, because it gives sanction 
and encouragement to amateur efforts at 
psycho-analysis. The danger of the subject 
being lightly handled by the amateur is a real 
one — whether the would-be analyst holds a 
medical degree or not. He is strongly tempted 
to express an opinion on other people's 
dreams, and is likely to fall into the error that 

^11 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

has already been noted : that of interpreting 
symbols by rule of thumb, without any investi- 
gation of personal associations. Then again, 
he is likely to be suffering from an uncon- 
scious motive of his own. When the amateur 
analyst has just begun to discover his own 
seething cauldron of conflict and perplexity, 
he is naturally thirsting to find other people 
with similar conflicts, and to project on to 
them the problems which he would like to 
shirk himself. Furthermore, it may be said 
that the tendency to talk lightly about the in- 
terpretation of dreams, to challenge one's 
friends to tell their dreams, and to offer glib 
interpretations of them at sight, is evidence 
that the person in question has not been suffi- 
ciently sobered by his own experience. He 
has not learnt to take a sufficiently serious view 
of the unconscious and its function, and he 
is probably in need of a prolonged study of 
his own conflict with his mouth shut. But 
while amateur analysis is a very doubtful and 
often a thoroughly dangerous means of trying 
to help other people, there is much to be 
gained by an attempt to study one's own 
dreams consistently and seriously. It is much 
less exciting, produces at first very small re- 
sults, and these mostly of a humiliating kind, 
and in general demands great perseverance 

174 



Dream Symbolism 

and sincerity. In the first place, most people 
find it an effort to recapture their dreams. It 
is often far easier and cheaper to get other 
people's dream material than to remember 
our own. When the collection of dreams has 
been begun, many that have been noted down 
will appear quite unintelligible. After a 
time it will be found that certain symbols re- 
appear. Perhaps a certain Uncle John will 
begin to figure in the dreams. The dreamer 
has to ask himself what this person stands for 
in his life, and it may then appear that the 
most obvious thing about Uncle John was his 
notorious stinginess. A beginning has been 
made, and in time other personages will be 
identified as representing other aspects or 
tendencies of the dreamer's character; and he 
will begin to recognize also some of the racial 
symbols that are the common stock of 
humanity. While he is slowly learning the 
language of his own dream symbolism, fresh 
problems appear. Is the dream a picture of 
the psychological situation as it is, or is it a 
criticism of it? Sometimes the dream is a 
statement of the problem; sometimes it is com- 
pensatory, and contains the factors that have 
been ignored in consciousness. In his own 
case, the dreamer will usually have material 
for deciding which of these two functions the 

175 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

dream is fulfilling; in the case of other people, 
he may well hesitate to give an opinion. The 
person who has served the apprenticeship of 
studying his own dreams for some years may 
possibly by that time have reached the posi- 
tion of being able to help some of his friends, 
but no longer in the spirit of light-hearted 
assurance. In all probability he will have 
been a good deal sobered by much dreary con- 
tact with his own unpleasant unconscious; but 
he will also have gained some results, which, 
however small, are of great value. It sounds 
a vague and difficult process. There is indeed 
no dogmatic certainty to be found in dreams, 
and no verbal inspiration. Nevertheless, 
those who are content to follow the evidence 
where it leads, through confusion and ob- 
scurity, may begin to find emerging such cer- 
tainties as are the crown of disinterested study 
in a difficult field. If they cannot say of their 
dreams, 

"All's a clear rede and no more riddle now," 
they have made the more important discovery : 

"Truth, nowhere, lies yet everywhere in these — 
Not absolutely in a portion, yet 
Evolvable from the whole : evolved at last 
Painfully, held tenaciously . . ." ^ 
^R. Browning: The Ring and the Book. The Pope. 
II. 227, 228, ff. 

176 



Dream Symbolism 

There is one feature of dream interpretation 
that has constantly been a stumbling-block, 
and that is the amount of sexual symbolism 
that occurs. Two things may be said of this. 
In the first place, the conditions of life in a 
civilized community in peace-time demand a 
greater restraint of the sexual instinct than of 
any other of the instincts. From that fact 
alone it would follow that our dream-life is 
more taken up with the whole question of sex 
than with the other instinctive activities. The 
second reason is that sexual symbolism has for 
all time been a racial form of expression for 
qualities of character. Primitive man looked 
on sexual life as the test of character and 
maturity: the male symbol was inseparable 
from the ideas of potency, virility, executive 
power — a process to which the very name of 
virtue bears witness in modern speech. There 
are many pictures ^ in dreams that can be re- 
duced to an obvious sexual significance, but 
refer primarily to other problems in the 
dreamer's life, and symbolize not physical or 
objective sexuality but factors of character 
growth. Psychology owes to Dr. Jung this 
immensely fruitful conception of the interpre- 
tation of sexual symbols on the subjective 
plane. 

^ Cf. The Nurse's Dream, p. 103, f. 
177 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

We pass on to consider some of the more 
frequently recurring racial symbols. Of these 
one of the most unvarying is Right and Left, 
representing ethical right and wrong. This 
is a universal symbol whose meaning appears 
to be very rarely altered by any personal 
association. 

Another very important piece of symbolism 
is that of the Self and the Not-Self. It is com- 
mon to have a dream in which there are two 
people, both of whom are somehow identified 
with oneself. These dreams often show in a 
very significant way where the major synthesis 
of the personality lies: they are a picture of 
the distribution of interest. ''/ was in my 
form-room giving a lesson; but somehow I 
was really sitting in the corner of the room, 
writing a letter/' A dream of this type would 
suggest that the driving force of life was not 
concentrated on the work that the person was 
supposed to be doing. 

Bridges, Cross-roads, and Rivers to cross 
often appear with the meaning of crossing a 
Rubicon — making a decision. It is interest- 
ing how frequently the dreamer notes whether 
he is crossing from the right bank to the left 
or vice versa. He may not notice it when he 
first records the dream, but on inquiry can 
nearly always remember the direction of the 

178 



Dream Symbolism 

stream. The following is the dream of a 
person of much zeal and ability, who took a 
leading part in religious propaganda. ''/ was 
looking out of a window on to a street, which 
was crowded with people. I was telling them 
to go to the right; at the end of the road they 
would find a bridge, and when they had 
crossed the bridge they would get a wonder- 
ful view," So far the picture represented the 
dreamer's life and message much as it would 
appear in the conscious estimate of the situa- 
tion. The dream went on: '^Curiously 
enough I didn't feel any desire to go that way 
myself. I was constantly looking over to the 
left. . . ." The dream had so obvious a bear- 
ing on the situation that it was difficult to im- 
agine that its real significance was to be sought 
for in terms of objective sexuality, by inter- 
preting the bridge in the strictly anatomical 
sense in which this symbol is accepted by the 
Freudian School. 

Earth, Air and Water are symbols of great 
interest. Earth frequently symbolizes the 
concrete, terra firma, the objective fact of out- 
ward reality. There is often an element of 
criticism and ridicule in the dream-cartoons 
of going up in an aeroplane, or otherwise 
soaring away from the earth. It expresses the 
escape into phantasy : the tendency to do great 

179 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

things in imagination, rather than in fact. It 
is akin to the principle of the monkey tribe, 
swinging about in the branches, despising the 
animals who plod along the earth — 

"Dreaming ot deeds that we mean to do, 
All complete in a minute or two." 

On the other hand, the dreamer may find 
himself trying in vain to start an aeroplane: 
the machine refuses to rise, and he can only 
move along the ground. His problem is that 
he is unable to get away from the concrete 
and the objective, and lacks the capacity for 
vision and imagination. 

In another sense the earth represents the un- 
conscious. In many dreams and myths the 
dreamer or the hero has to go down into the 
earth, or into some cave, where he meets trial 
and danger, and from which he emerges with 
new life and power, sometimes symbolized by 
a treasure or a weapon that he has found. 
This movement towards the mother earth — 
antiquam exquirere matrem — is one of the 
great symbols of re-birth. 

Water has also an important association 
with the idea of re-birth. It is a symbol with 
many meanings. In one of the most interest- 
ing it represents the intermediate element be- 

i8o 



Dream Symbolism 

tween earth and air, that is to say, the zone 
in which thought and physical feeling meet. 
In this sense it often appears in the dreams of 
the adolescent at that critical period when he 
or she is making the discovery that physical 
feeling can be altered by thought-processes. 
It appears with unmistakable significance in 
the story of Europa. The subject of this 
myth is one of the unvarying themes of 
human life, and the terms in which it is ex- 
pressed are no less a part of the permanent 
symbolism of the race. The imagery of the 
story is constantly re-appearing in the dreams 
of people who are quite unversed in mythol- 
ogy. Europa is in a meadow near the sea- 
shore with her brothers. She is playing with 
flowers — the symbols of romance. Her 
brothers leave her and the white bull appears. 
She is afraid, and calls for help, but she can- 
not make her brothers hear. Her fear is soon 
forgotten, for the bull appears so gentle and 
inviting that she plays with him, and decks 
him with her flowers, and finally gets on to his 
back. But when she thus yields herself to him 
completely, he is off with her at once, and he 
makes straight for the water — the sphere of 
passion, where sentiment and sensation meet. 
He plunges in with her, and swims away, 

i8i 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

and she never returns to her father's house.^ 
The rest of the story may be recalled here, 
for it it is equally full of meaning. It tells 
how Cadmus sets out in search of his sister, 
accompanied by his mother, his brother, and 
his playfellow; how first one, and then an- 
other of them is left behind; until at last he 
is bereft even of the object of his pilgrimage. 
The Oracle tells him to forget Europa and 
the bull, and to set out on a new quest: he is 
to "follow the cow," the feminine principle. 
The story tells how he finds at last the site 
of his new home, and decides to settle there 
with his male companions. At this point he 
turns away wearily from further eflFort, and 
surrenders himself to thoughts of the past. 
He is aroused by the loss of his friends, and 
the challenge to fight the dragon. The myth 
continues with the powerful symbolism of the 
sowing of the dragon's teeth : the conflict that 
follows: the laborious building of the city: 
and at the last, the sudden discovery of the 
palace not made with hands, and of Har- 
monia, the veiled woman, at once familiar and 
strange, waiting there for Cadmus. Under 
such symbols myth and legend present in a 

^ The symbolism of the flowers and the sudden menace 
has an exact parallel in the dream of the adolescent girl, 
quoted on p. iii above. 

182 



Dream Symbolism 

collective form the permanent problems of 
development and progress; and under such 
symbols again the unconscious still objectifies 
these problems in the dreams of individuals. 

Another symbol that is common is the 
house, or the room, representing the dreamer's 
own mental life. At the beginning of analy- 
sis, when the patient is discovering the vast- 
ness of the problem to be dealt with, it is very 
common to dream of a house with which no 
personal associations can be given. "/ dreamt 
that I was in a large house, with long cor- 
ridors, and a great many rooms. I tried to 
get into some of them, hut they were all 
locked. It was very strange and bare." The 
dreamer is startled at the extent of the un- 
known, unfamiliar chambers of his mind. 
Often the dream will go on: ''/ was on the 
first floor, and I heard you calling me to come 
down into the cellar." This is the analyst's 
demand that the dreamer should penetrate 
below the surface of his problem, and get 
down to the unconscious factors. 

Numbers play an important part in the 
symbolism of the unconscious: but the mean- 
ing is often very difficult to trace. A young 
man, the patient of a colleague of the writer's, 
was obsessed by the number four. He could 
not sleep, until he had arranged four things 

183 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

on the table by his bed. In the course of the 
day, he always contrived to dirty two pairs of 
shoes, in order that there might be four shoes 
outside his bedroom door. He was quite un- 
able to account for the obsession. The expla- 
nation was found to be as follows: The man 
was a Jew, and four was the number of the 
family pew in the synagogue. It represented 
symbolically and unconsciously the whole idea 
of the Jewish tradition, family tradition, 
family religion. 

A patient in a nursing home, who was not 
ostensibly dissatisfied with the fees that she 
was paying, namely eight guineas a week, 
dreamed that she was for one day at an hotel 
in France; that a bill for 30 francs was 
brought to her, and that she protested that it 
was too dear. In discussing the dream she 
was asked what would be the charge per week 
at this rate. After some time she arrived at 
the conclusion that it would be 210 francs, 
and after further calculation, this was dis- 
covered to be eight guineas. She found the 
coincidence embarrassing. 

Another patient dreamt that she was sup- 
ping at the Trocadero. A waiter brought her 
a bill, saying, ''Here is your bill for 2s. 6d., 
but you must pay 4^. 6d. for the waiters." She 
replied: "I will pay the 2s. 6d., but I will 

184 



Dream Symbolism 

not pay the 4^. td., no matter what the other 
people may do." She had been much troubled 
with perplexity in making a decision between 
two courses which were open to her. One 
was marriage, and the other was social service ; 
and she knew she had to do one or the other 
(as all of us have to do — and some of us, both) . 
Eventually the 2s. td. was found to represent 
the two-and-a-half years during which she 
had served as a V.A.D. — the only social 
service she had ever done in her life — during 
which she had been happier than at any other 
time. It was exactly four-and-a-half years 
since she had first met the man whom it was 
possible for her to marry. The dream repre- 
sented the decision in her own mind between 
the readiness to accept the solution of a con- 
ventional marriage, and the willingness to 
justify her existence by some form of service, 
such as she had already tried. 

All forms of locomotion are interesting and 
important symbols. They represent charac- 
ter-growth, development, the dynamics of 
life; and obviously they may be fast or slow, 
easy or difficult, suitable or unsuitable, 
restricted or free. Here is an example of a 
peculiarly unsuitable form of locomotion. It 
appears in the dream of a Colonel. He be- 
longed to an old Army family; took his pro- 

i8s 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

fesslon with great seriousness, and before the 
war held a staff appointment at a Military 
College. He had a great reputation as a lec- 
turer on tactics. When the war broke out he 
received instructions from the War Office, 
which made it seem probable that he would 
be ordered to France in an important capacity, 
and that he would soon have the opportunity 
of putting his knowledge to practical use. He 
began to be troubled with insomnia. He had 
absolutely no fear for his life: but he had an 
intolerable fear for his reputation. He could 
not face the thought that it might not survive 
the test of actual warfare. And so he was 
unable to sleep. When he was asked if he 
had had any dreams lately, he said he had not 
— except indeed for a mere fragment that was 
of no importance. The fragment ran thus: 
''/ was travelling over a very muddy field in 
a great hurry to get somewhere. I was walkr 
ing on a high pair of stilts." His problem 
was not lack of ability or lack of zeal : it was 
just that he needed to come down from his 
perch, and to risk getting his reputation be- 
spattered in contact with the experience of 
active service. 

Another unsuitable form of locomotion ap- 
pears in the dream of a patient who was being 

1 86 



Dream Symbolism 

treated for stammer: but had also sold his 
soul as completely as Faust ever sold his. He 
was a doctor, and as soon as he was qualified 
he had become assistant superintendent at a 
small country asylum. There he had re- 
mained for seven years. He disclaimed any 
special interest in the work — such interests as 
he had lay in other directions. He remained 
there, he said, because it was so safe. General 
practice might be more varied and interest- 
ing, but he considered it a risky business : you 
might easily make a mess of it or lose it, or 
have an action brought against you. More- 
over, it was a life that was full of disturbances 
by day and night. In his present post he was 
sure of his position and his pension; his meals 
were regular, his nights were undisturbed; 
everything was the same from day to day. His 
one principle in life was "Safety first," and he 
had become a perfect slave to routine. This 
was his dream : "I was travelling over rough, 
boggy country on a narrow gauge railway. 
The gauge was only twelve inches. I saw a 
hill ahead, and realized that the rails didn't 
go over it. I woke in terror." The routine 
which appears to carry one forward so 
smoothly from day to day is shown as an in- 
adequate vehicle of progress. The only way 

187 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

to get over the Hill Difficulty is to get out of 
the groove and to walk. 

Animals are a symbol for the way in which 
we are looking at life's forces. The bull rep- 
resents the view of these forces as too power- 
ful to be safe, too violent to be argued with. 
Europa finds herself carried off by an irre- 
sistible force. Black and white symbolize 
approval and disapproval: and the white bull 
is a pure libido, but terrifyingly strong. 

In addition to this conception of the bull, 
myth symbolism contains the idea of purifica- 
tion by the blood of the bull. The power of 
this symbol is seen in the whole religion of 
Mithraism, which is dominated by the idea 
that mankind is up against tremendous forces, 
and that purification must come by participa- 
tion in these very forces. The symbolism of 
the cow has already been touched upon in 
referring to the Europa myth. 

In dreaming of the horse or the dog, we are 
identifying the forces of life with more man- 
ageable and friendly animals. The rat often 
appears in the dreams of people who are 
thinking of the sex-impulse as something they 
loathe and despise: they are also afraid of it, 
and they wish it would get into its hole, and 
disappear. It is an unsatisfactory attitude, 
and generally characteristic of the prude. 

1 88 



Dream Symbolism 

A reference has already been made ^ to the 
symbols of the spear and the grail, represent- 
ing the two great sex characteristics, the 
executive and the receptive. These belong to 
the eternal verities of life, and are continually 
appearing in dreams. 

The problem of authority, which is of such 
vital importance to the child and to the 
adolescent, often finds symbolic expression in 
dreams. An example of this has already been 
quoted.^ 

The tooth is a frequent symbol of great im- 
portance. It represents in the first place an 
adjustment to life, the primitive means of 
defence. Secondly, it stands for the idea of 
something of which a part is showing and a 
part is hidden; and it is the hidden part that 
is apt to cause pain. The tooth appears as 
a symbol of a system of ideas which have 
formed a complex below the level of con- 
sciousness. A patient will often dream that 
the analyst is taking out his teeth : expressing 
the idea that part of what has been his equip- 
ment in life is being attacked, and that it can- 
not be removed without causing pain to the 
part that lies beneath the surface. 

The symbolism of death and re-birth runs 
^ V. supra, p. 103, 177. ^ V. supra, p. 89. 
189 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

through all mythology, and constantly appears 
in dreams. People who have particularly 
vivid dreams of the death of friends are apt 
to turn to the obituary column of the morning 
paper next day, and as soon as they learn that 
the friend in question is in robust health, they 
are a little ashamed of having been tempted 
to take a dream seriously, and they dismiss it 
from their minds forthwith. But the uncon- 
scious IS commonly taken up with something 
infinitely more important to the dreamer than 
the prediction of what will happen to other 
people. It is concerned with a problem that 
lies within the personality of the dreamer him- 
self, and the persons who figure in the dream 
are aspects of this personality. The informa- 
tion that the dream supplies is, therefore, not 
of a kind that can be obtained more satisfac- 
torily from external sources. The dreamer 
has to ask himself what it is that the friend 
stands for in his life: for the dream deals with 
the death of this part of his personality. 

Sometimes it is the dreamer himself who is 
represented as dead, or as having to die. An 
example of this is found in the dream of an 
exceedingly active-minded matron, who had 
come to a hospital prepared to "make things 
hum," chiefly by means of a vigorous pro- 
gramme of whist-drives, entertainments, and 

190 



Dream Symbolism 

so forth. "/ dreamt that I was at the end of^ 
Margate Pier, and had to throw myself into 
the sea," She had never been to Margate, 
and had no personal associations with it. Pre- 
sumably, therefore, it symbolized its general 
characteristic — incessant, shallow, meaning- 
less amusement of the Christy minstrel type. 
Her undue extraversion and over-activity on 
the conscious plane calls forth a compensatory 
movement in the unconscious : the demand 
that she should leave Margate Pier behind, 
and go down into deep waters. 

Birth dreams are explained by the Freudian 
School on the theory that the unconscious is 
stored with memories of the ante-natal life. 
Jung's interpretation of these dreams is of 
surpassing value. Every new adjustment to 
life is a re-birth out of the death of the old. 
Death and re-birth form, therefore, a con- 
stant theme in the present history of the indi- 
vidual. The advance to a new phase of 
growth is attended by definite self-renuncia- 
tion. The special privileges of childhood 
have to be surrendered in making the adjust- 
ment to adolescence; there is again a re-birth 
to adult life.^ When the active and generative 
life is at end, there is the demand to curtail 

^ Cf . The dream of the girl burying her baby in the 
wood, quoted on p. io6 above, 

191 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

activities, to surrender positions of impor- 
tance and responsibility: the renunciation that 
is essential to the next new birth, the adjust- 
ment to old age. These drastic changes in 
the life of the individual do not come sud- 
denly. The new phase of growth is germinat- 
ing slowly in the unconscious long before it 
emerges into the upper air. It is often fore- 
shadowed in dreams, before it enters waking 
experience; and this is the truest sense in 
which dreams are prophetic. 



TQ2 



CHAPTER IX 

THE HERD INSTINCT AND THE 
HERD IDEAL 



Recapitulation : 

The gregarious nature of man. 
Society greater than the individual. 
The next generation more important than the 
present. 

Two Types of Mental Mechanism in Social Rela- 
tionships: 

Normal social influences. 
Mob hysteria. 

Two Types in Society: 

Prophets and priests. 

Development of the Individual in his Relation 
to the Herd: 

From an individual to a collective aim. 
From a collective to an individual judgment. 

The Herd Instinct: 

A distinct instinct and an unconscious motive. 
Two typical reactions : the fear of being isolated, 
and the fear of being ignored. 

The Herd Instinct and the Herd Ideal: 
Sublimation. 



THE HERD INSTINCT AND THE 
HERD IDEAL 

/^ERTAIN preliminary assumptions from 
^^ previous chapters may be restated here 
as the obvious foundation for a discussion of 
the herd instinct. It w^as urged ^ that the 
question of individual development could not 
be studied without reference to sociological 
principles. Man is a gregarious animal: and 
v^hether we like it or not, this fact has to be 
taken into account in studying his psychol- 
ogy. Secondly, it was maintained ^ that the 
demands of society are superior to those of 
the individual. It is a familiar paradox that 
the progress of civilization is marked by an 
increasing sense of the value of the individual, 
and an increasing readiness on the part of the 
individual to recognize the paramount claims 
of the community. It is by ignoring the latter 
point — so it seems to the present writer — that 
the original school of psycho-analysis has been 
led to take up such an extreme position. 

^ V. supra, 73. ^ V. supra, p. 74. 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

Thirdly, we have assumed the evolutionary 
standpoint/ with its fundamental principle 
that the next generation is more important 
than the present one. Probably most of us 
hold this view in theory, but have more diffi- 
culty in accepting its far-reaching implica- 
tions in practice. We dislike a high income 
tax, even though it means that the next genera- 
tion may be freer from the burden of war 
debt. Why not let posterity pay? There are 
many other more subtle and exacting ways in 
which the nation and the individual are 
tempted to ignore the claims of the future for 
the sake of immediate gain. Analytical psy- 
chology has brought impressive evidence to 
reinforce the criticism of this policy. Jung 
finds the acceptance of the evolutionary prin- 
ciple a central element in his conception of 
psychological health. . . . *'The real ground 
of the neurosis," he writes to a colleague,^ "is, 
in many cases, the inability to recognize the 
work that is waiting for them (the patients in 
question) of helping to build up a new civili- 
zation. We are all far too much at the stand- 
point of the 'nothing-but' psychology; we 
persist in thinking that we can squeeze the 
new future, which is pressing in at the door 

^ V. supra, p. 75. 

^ C. G. Jung : Analytical Psychology, p. 277. 
196 



The Herd Instinct and the Herd Ideal 

into the framework of the old and the known. 
And thus the view is only of the present, never 
of the future. But it was of the most pro- 
found psychological significance when Chris- 
tianity first discovered in the orientation 
towards the future a redeeming principle for 
mankind. In the past nothing can be altered, 
and in the present little, but the future is ours, 
and capable of raising life's intensity to its 
highest pitch. A Utile space of youth belongs 
to us; all the rest of life belongs to our chil- 
dren." 

In all social relationships the mental mech- 
anism at work may belong to one of the two 
types distinguished by "normal social influ- 
ences," and "mob hysteria." The former 
type works from above downward : that is to 
say, that ideas and purposes that belong to the 
higher levels of the mental life of the com- 
munity gradually percolate down, and multi- 
ply and enrich their content, producing a 
system of poly-ideism. This mechanism can 
be seen at work in the slow conquest of popu- 
lar thought by any great scientific conception, 
in the gradual triumph of a political or re- 
ligious truth that is at first held only by a 
small and probably despised minority. (It 
is perhaps from some dim sense of the work- 
ing of this mechanism that individuals and 

197 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

groups which consider themselves above the 
common level of culture and morality feel it 
80 incumbent upon them to impose their ideas 
on those who are inferior to them. The 
psychology of propaganda is, however, dis- 
tinct from that of normal social influence. In 
the first place, the levels of mental life can 
only be judged to be "higher" or "lower" on 
the merits of the ideas they produce, and not 
by any preconceived standard of superiority. 
And, secondly, the methods of spreading the 
idea are different: in the one case it is imposed 
by force of authority; in the other it is ac- 
cepted for its intrinsic value.) 

By the mechanism of mob hysteria the idea 
spreads from below upwards. It springs from 
the lower levels of thought and desire, and it 
tends to dominate attention completely, and 
to annihilate all other ideas which might be 
brought into critical contact with it. In this 
way it makes for a system of mono-ideism. 
Ideas that are diffused by normal social influ- 
ences are invariably corrected by racial and 
historical experience; but mob hysteria works 
independently of these influences. This 
mechanism can be traced in many of the great 
and sensational movements of history. If we 
look, for example, at the Crusades, the French 
Revolution and the Russian Revolution, we 

198 



The Herd Instinct and the Herd Ideal 

can realize the way in which a single idea 
wells up, gradually obliterating all controlling 
and neutralizing ideas. To say this is not to 
pronounce judgment on the ultimate value of 
these movements. It may be granted for the 
sake of argument that for the sake of the 
nation and of the world it was desirable that 
the Russian autocracy that existed at the out- 
break of the war should give place to a democ- 
racy or a republic. The social psychologist 
is then concerned to know what mechanism 
brought the change about. It becomes clear 
that the minds that were most competent to 
see the vision for the future and to bring it 
into being in the most valuable form for 
society failed in their function; and by their 
failure they made way for a second-rate 
mechanism, whereby a single controlling idea 
swept upward with devastating effects — the 
idea of taking from the have's to give to the 
have-nots. This idea, in its attempt to pro- 
duce the democracy of justice, the ideal so- 
ciety, has produced — temporarily at least — 
great confusion. The psychologist's criticism 
is that the higher minds are responsible for 
seeing the vision of a new social idea, bal- 
ancing it with other creative ideas, harmoniz- 
ing it with the lessons of history, and allowing 
it to spread by the process of normal social 

199 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

influence ; and that where they fail to do this, 
the opposite process is bound to take place, 
the regressive process of mob hysteria, 
obsessed by a single idea, wasting the lessons 
of history, and wasting much more that is 
valuable to society in its attempt to reach the 
one goal that it has. 

Every community is made up of prophets 
and priests: and the efficiency of the com- 
munity depends very largely on the balance 
being maintained between the two elements; 
radicals and tories: modernists and prelates: 
visionaries and reactionaries.^ There is always 
conflict between them: but the more acute it 
is the worse for the society. In the ideal state, 
the tradition of the past, the heritage of ex- 
periment and example are all conserved and 
reverenced by the priests, but with such a lack 
of rigidity and formalism that they remain 
reasonably open to the voice of the prophets; 
who, in their turn, are really seeing a vision, 
and are able to transmit it so that it can be 
accepted to some extent even by the priests. 
The community that becomes unbalanced in 
respect of these two elements experiences so- 

^This division corresponds roughly with Trotter's 
classification on the basis of the "sensitive" and the 
"resistive" types, v. Instincts of the Herd in Peace and 
War. 

200 



The Herd Instinct and the Herd Ideal 

cial failure of one form or another. If you 
stone the prophets, you have Judaism; if you 
stone the priests, you have Bolshevism : a com- 
munity disintegrated because it insists on 
remaking every experiment that history has 
already recorded. 

When we consider the child's attitude to 
social relationships, we find that in the course 
of his development, it has to be transformed 
in two ways. He begins life with an aim that 
is purely egocentric; his interest should grad- 
ually widen out, until his aim becomes com- 
pletely collective. His judgment has to 
undergo the reverse transformation ; from be- 
ing normally collective, the product of his 
suggestibility, it has to become completely 
individual. One of the vital tests of any sys- 
tem of education is its power to help the child 
in both these aspects of his adjustment to 
authority. The conflict between progress and 
regression in these two directions is a common 
theme in the dream-life of the individual who 
has failed to make this adjustment satisfac- 
torily. 

The following dream is an example: "7 
was bicycling back to the big house from 
which we had set out for our expedition. I 
came to the gateway, and was told to look out, 
but the coast was clear. When we got in, I 

20 1 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

saw that there was reason for the warning, for 
approaching the gate from the inside was a 
small hoy on a bicycle, towing a full-sized 
motor 'bus with people in it. There was a 
hill just before the gate, and when he stopped, 
I expected him to be dragged backwards by 
the weight of the 'bus; but he had it balanced 
and perfectly under control." Earlier inci- 
dents in the dream proved it to be a regressive 
ride. The dreamer had set out from the 
ancestral home, but had veered round towards 
it again, crossing to the left bank of a slow 
river, and finding there a misshapen infant, 
who was somehow taken along on the bicycle. 
The small boy was associated with a picture 
called Vers la Vie, representing youth and 
progress. While the dreamer, hampered by 
the presence of the infantile personality, rides 
downhill back to the house, individuality, 
towing collective opinion, goes forth in the 
opposite direction. 

Wilfred Trotter's study of the herd instinct ^ 
has earned the gratitude of all psychologists. 
It is impossible to deny the truth of his obser- 
vations, which are extraordinarily incisive and 
irresistibly stated. The herd instinct had 
been very largely ignored; although it seems 
to the writer that the academic sociologists 

^ Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. 
202 



The Herd Instinct and the Herd Ideal 

had not Ignored it so completely in the past 
as the Freudian School continues to do to-day, 
in treating it merely as the escape of the sexual 
urge in one direction. As against this view, 
Trotter's statement of the case for the herd 
instinct as one that cannot be defined in terms 
of any other instinct, but as a distinct concep- 
tion, appears conclusive and unanswerable. 
Trotter has shown how much of our conduct, 
how many of our beliefs and opinions are dic- 
tated by the unconscious acceptance of herd 
domination. In so doing, he has described 
very fully one more type of unconscious 
motive. We are all dependent upon the herd, 
frightened of its criticism, afraid of being 
isolated from it, and afraid of being ignored 
by it. The herd may be represented by a big 
social group or a very small one: but we are 
always influenced far more than we realize 
by this herd dependence, which not only taints 
our judgment, but also reacts upon our highest 
ethical hopes and aspirations. In particular 
the spontaneity, the creativeness, the origi- 
nality, and to some extent the phantasy of our 
lives is impinging constantly upon a critical 
barrier that we have set up within ourselves: 
What will the herd say to this? 

Our conscious thought is characteristically 
individual: we are aware of our personal 

203 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

identity, and the ways in which we differ from 
other people: but it needs some special cir- 
cumstance to make us realize the extent to 
which we are shaped by the influence of the 
herd, and we are perhaps least aware of those 
characteristics which we share with the 
greatest number of our fellows. 

The reaction to herd instinct manifests it- 
self in apparently contradictory ways. With 
some it appears primarily as the impulse of 
the chameleon to take the hue of the company 
they are with. The undergraduate who, on a 
Bohemian reading party, develops an ultra- 
Bohemian attitude, is quite capable of appear- 
ing not long afterwards at a supper party at 
the Ritz, a perfect slave to convention, down 
to the smallest detail of his dress, manner and 
appearance. With some it is the fear of be- 
ing ignored by the herd that is the predom- 
inant factor. These people display something 
of the rebel psychology described in an earlier 
chapter. They can dispense with the approval 
of the herd as long as they have its attention. 
They will go to business without a hat on, or 
they will wear fantastic frocks, or stand up on 
platforms, and pronounce heretical views all 
to escape the horrible fate of being ignored. 
They would rather count as oddities than pass 
unnoticed as mediocrities. 

204 



The Herd Instinct and the Herd Ideal 

The herd instinct is a primary instinct of 
the animal type, working for a biological end. 
We can study its manifestations among vari- 
ous species of animal and in man. We can 
detect it as the unconscious motive underlying 
the rationalization of human social behaviour. 
But the most complete examination of it from 
the standpoint of the "nothing-but" psychol- 
ogy does not 'exhaust its significance. In- 
stincts work to an end that is a part of animal 
life; motives are restricted to the human race, 
and they work to an ideal. The emergence 
of this type of conscious motive, if it is recog- 
nized as characteristic of human life, intro- 
duces a new factor which limits the applica- 
tion of all analogies between human and 
animal psychology, though it does not detract 
from their value. The animal instinct which 
persists in man is operating under changed 
conditions, which demand fresh forms of 
expression. The evidence that has been col- 
lected of the working of the herd instinct in 
man suggests the conclusion that there are 
definite limits to its achievement, so long as 
it is operating mainly in the unconscious, and 
in the forms most strictly analogous to those 
of animal life. The typical human expres- 
sion of the herd instinct is to be found not in 
the unreasoning impetus of mob hysteria, nor 

205 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

in those slighter and subtler modifications of 
behaviour which reveal our constant de- 
pendence on the herd; it is to be found rather 
in the conscious recognition of the herd in- 
stinct, and the transformation of it into the 
herd motive and ideal. The two forms of 
expression of the herd instinct are sufficiently 
distinct to be recognized by all who study 
human behaviour: but the facts arouse dif- 
ferent comments. Some are disposed to em- 
phasize the truth that social idealism is after 
all rooted in herd instinct: they know its ante- 
cedents too well to be unduly impressed by it; 
the new form that it has assumed is of more 
than the gilding of a biological pill. Others 
are more interested to observe the profound 
psychological difference between the process 
of being unconsciously impelled by an in- 
stinct, and that of consciously acting upon a 
motive. 

The herd instinct, transformed into an ideal, 
means the effective recognition by the indi- 
vidual that all his potentialities, spiritual, 
mental or physical, are held in trust for the 
herd. This identification with the collective 
aim of society is the underlying principle of 
sublimation: the direction of instinct to a 
cognate end that is socially valuable. 

The mechanism of sublimation has already 
206 



The Herd Instinct and the Herd Ideal 

been briefly discussed. We return to it here 
as being of supreme importance in consider- 
ing the whole question of the education of the 
individual in relation to the herd. The mod- 
ern society makes heavy demands upon the 
sublimating power of its members; and their 
happiness and social efiiciency are largely 
bound up with its successful exercise. In par- 
ticular the choice of occupations needs to be 
considered in the light of the principle of sub- 
limation. If we compare domestic service 
with the work of a barmaid, it is obvious that 
the former occupation offers considerable op- 
portunity for the sublimation of the "home- 
making" group of instincts; while the latter 
offers very little opportunity for any useful 
form of sublimation at all. It has already 
been pointed out that the work of a nurse gives 
unique opportunities for sublimating that pure 
maternal instinct which revolves round ^he 
relationship of helpfulness to the helpiess. 
This particular instinct would find practically 
no indirect expression in the occupations of a 
typist or a factory hand. 

The right direction of the forces of life is a 
problem of dynamics which concerns the state 
as much as the individual. Of all forms of 
waste perhaps the most extravagant is that 
waste of vital human energy which is begun 

207 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

by a repressive and unsuitable form of educa- 
tion and maintained by forcing individuals 
into careers in which they have no adequate 
opportunity of self-realization. It is small 
wonder that from the indignant contemplation 
of instances of this extravagance, many people 
should be led to the extreme of affirming the 
individual right to self-expression, even at the 
expense of the community. The writer is, 
however, not prepared to abandon the concep- 
tion of sublimation as the direction of in- 
stinctive energy along channels that are so- 
cially useful. The boy with an irresistible 
spirit of adventure sublimates it more success- 
fully by joining the Navy, than by becoming 
a lion-tamer. The young man who spends his 
spare time in being a scoutmaster disposes of 
his whole surplus energy more successfully 
than he would do by merely working oiff a cer- 
tain amount of it by playing golf. 

The last example brings us to an important 
practical consideration : namely, the oppor- 
tunities of sublimation provided by leisure. 
Many of the occupations which under present 
industrial conditions appear to be necessary to 
society are of the kind that offer little or no 
opportunity for sublimation. The force of 
circumstances drives a certain number of 
people to occupations for which they are quite 

208 



The Herd Instinct and the Herd Ideal 

unsuited. Those who serve society on such 
terms as these are entitled to adequate oppor- 
tunity of sublimation and expression of in- 
stinctive energy In their leisure time. 

It is to be hoped that the development of 
social science will discover the way to mini- 
mize the number of necessary and purely me- 
chanical occupations, and to enable the indi- 
vidual to find more easily the form of work 
for which he is specially suited. It has been 
truly pointed out^ that the study of neurotic 
patients from the standpoint of the uncon- 
scious points to the idea of special tasks. 
"There appears to be a particular line along 
which fullest expression is most easily expe- 
rienced in every individual. Along this line 
the point of excess is not soon reached; on the 
contrary it would appear that there is a back- 
ing from the unconscious." Sublimation is 
not achieved solely by the good intention of 
serving the herd; it involves the re-direction 
of instinctive energy to a cognate end, and it 
must therefore express that line of interest 
which is most strongly developed in the indi- 
vidual. 

^ Dream Psychology, by Maurice Nicoll. Oxford 
Medical Publications, p. 184. 



209 



CHAPTER X 
EDUCATIONAL METHODS 



Self-realization through Achievement. 

The Urge to Achievement: the Impulse of the 
Sensation-monger: and the Readiness to be 
Ignored. 

The Impact Between Adult Authority and the 
Child : 

Removal of adult authority. 
Discipline through interest. 
Discipline and the Forces of nature. 

Elements in Achievement: 

Conquest and understanding. 
The Creative element. 
Social value. 
Other criteria. 

The Individual and the Group. ' 



EDUCATIONAL METHODS 

TN previous chapters we have strayed far 
from the direct consideration of educa- 
tional problems, and have been largely con- 
cerned w^ith the teacher's own mentality. 

We return at this point to set down some 
of the practical conclusions which seem to fol- 
low most irresistibly from the psychological 
evidence that has been considered. 

Of these conclusions, the most obvious is 
that the child cannot be taught self-realiza- 
tion: he can only reach that goal through 
achievement. All teaching has only a nega- 
tive value compared with the positive value 
of the experience of achievement. 

The urge to achievement is the progressive 
side of the striving after power. The regres- 
sive side of it is the lure of attracting attention 
and creating an effect upon people. The child 
is a born sensation-monger. At a very early 
age he seems to become aware of his capacities 
in this direction and begins to exploit them. 
At a very advanced age, and with all the cere- 
mony of medical advice and domestic concern, 

213 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

he sometimes continues to gratify a yet unap- 
peased appetite for sensationalism. 

The child has always the alternative of sat- 
isfying his craving for power in one or other 
of these ways. He may complete his tower 
of bricks, or he may cause his nurse to look 
shocked and grieved by his naughtiness. In 
the first instance, he has achieved something; 
and in the second, he has created a sensation. 
Every child that is denied adequate and ap- 
propriate opportunities of achievement will 
find for itself chances of sensation-mongering. 
The particular genius of the Montessori 
method is to be found in the great range of 
opportunity for achievement with which it 
besets the path of the child, thus relieving it 
of the desire for creating a sensation. The 
complete triumph over this desire consists in 
the readiness to be ignored : and this quality 
Dr. Montessori has evoked in little children 
in a wonderful way, and by methods that are 
very far removed from those that are com- 
monly associated with the idea that ''Children 
should be seen and not heard." 

The contribution of the public school sys- 
tem to the development of this quality has been 
the constant practice of making it a preferable 
lot, as a rule, to be ignored rather than to be 
ttoticeable. The public schools have helped 

214 



Educational Methods 

many boys to "find their level" by offering 
them the somewhat crude alternative of phys- 
ical discomfort if they fail to do so. Up till 
recently, however, they have only offered to a 
very small percentage of boys opportunities 6i 
real achievement. It is true that the achieve- 
ment of winning First Eleven colours, or get- 
ting a University scholarship, are made much 
of; but the boy has to pilgrimage through 
many years of dreary obscurity before coming 
within reach of these golden chances. In the 
past, and occasionally even in the present, pub- 
lic schoolmasters have reiterated with com- 
placent pride that their schools have the re- 
markable and unusual value of teaching a hoy 
not to think so much of himself. This is per- 
fectly true, and in many cases undoubtedly 
desirable; but one may be permitted to ask 
whether the necessity for such a practice does 
not in itself imply the existence of a rather 
unsatisfactory state of affairs which is being 
dealt with by a compromise. The boy who 
from his earliest years has been surrounded by 
opportunities for achievement, who has been 
neither crushed nor adored at home, who has 
never known what it is to have his interest 
dammed back, and to feel shut in upon him- 
self, to whom work and play have much the 
same value as possibilities for achievement: 

215 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

such a boy rarely, if ever, "needs to find his 
level," and be taught to think less of himself. 
The arid but wholesome experience of being 
ignored need not be associated with the soul- 
destroying process of being bored, from which 
spring many of the most catastrophic outbursts 
of naughtiness and undesirable self-assertion. 

It is interesting to realize how, approaching 
the same problem from vastly different points 
of view, Dr. Montessori and General Baden- 
Powell have reached identical solutions, 
though applied in different spheres. The Boy 
Scout and the Girl Guide Movements intro- 
duce a system of varied possibilities of 
achievement into the life of the adolescent in 
just the same way as the Montessori method 
introduces it into the life of the child. 

It has already been pointed out ^ that educa- 
tion on these lines does not sacrifice the train- 
ing in attentive control which is directly aimed 
at by the method of enforced attention. The 
latter form of training is professedly based on 
the importance of being able to apply atten- 
tion to any subject at will. Huxley defined 
the purpose of education as being "To enable 
us to do the things we ought to do, when we 
want to do them, whether we like them or 

^ V. supra, p. 28. 
216 



Educational Methods 

not." He might well have extended his defini- 
tion to thought as well as action. This ideal 
is an essential factor in all true education; but 
it is sometimes pursued with all the emphasis 
on the power of directing and controlling at- 
tention, and little heed for the actual quality 
of the process itself. It calls up the picture 
of one of the great guns, so perfectly mounted 
and adjusted that it can be directed with the 
lightest touch — a wonderful mechanism, but 
useless if the gun will not fire. Enforced at- 
tention often defeats its own object by causing 
a condition of boredom and frustrated energy, 
which is not only a waste of time at the mo- 
ment, but tends to blunt the faculty of atten- 
tion itself. Recent educational experiments 
have proved to how great an extent the sys- 
tem of enforced attention creates its own prob- 
lem, and how the force of spontaneous in- 
terest, set free to work on suitable material, 
encounters its own experience of discipline as 
it makes its way along the road to achievement. 
There could be no more telling criticism of 
educational conceptions in the past than the 
fact of our deep-seated conviction that life 
will express itself as lawlessness; that if we do 
not exercise a rigid control over the mental 
activities of the child, they will waste them- 
selves in futility; that if we do not create 

217 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

order for the child he will make chaos for 
himself. Those who hold the opposite view 
have had to resist a great pressure of common 
opinion. Mr. Chesterton has seized the ele- 
ment of paradox in this situation, and has 
devoted some of his most persuasive wit"" to 
proving that it is the free and living society 
that creates for itself the discipline of new 
institutions; and that it is only when life ebbs 
away from them that there arises anarchy and 
death. Monsieur Bergson, by an extraor- 
dinary effort of philosophic detachment, has 
stepped outside the charmed circle of scholas- 
ticism, and from this new standpoint watched 
the creative movement of life itself. The new 
psychology has taken us back towards the con- 
ception of happiness as "unimpeded energy," '^ 
and has shown that our belief in enforced con- 
trol is largely the projection of the distrust of 
our own unconscious energies. Each in his 
own tongue, many a witness has testified to the 
necessity for making our thought about human 
affairs dynamic and not static, vital and not 
mechanical, in its categories. It is not easy to 
keep pace with thought on these terms, and to 
respond to this challenge. Least of all is it 
easy to accept its implications in education. 

1 Notably in Orthodoxy and Manalive. 
2l8 



Educational Methods 

It makes a great demand upon energy — a de- 
mand which can hardly be met by those whose 
own vital forces are largely repressed. Small 
wonder if some prefer that the children they 
teach should exhibit an orderly torpor or a 
mechanical regularity rather than any un- 
looked-for or misdirected outburst of energy. 
The most superficial observation of experi- 
ments in auto-education should be enough to 
convince one that they do not conduce to a 
mere policy of laissez faire on the part of the 
teacher; but, on the contrary, make new and 
exacting demands upon him. 

There is another aspect of the unnecessary 
impact between adult authority and the child 
about which we have much to learn. Our 
schools are all devised to carry out the wishes 
of the head master and others. The George 
Junior Republic in America and the now de- 
funct Little Commonwealth, instituted by Mr. 
Homer Lane, in England, represent an at- 
tempted solution of this problem. It is said 
that in Russia, since the establishment of the 
Soviet Government, children were empowered 
to select their own subjects of study, elect their 
teachers, and determine the length of their 
holidays. This state of affairs may only be a 
malevolent invention of the Morning Post, 
or an unwarranted boast of the Daily Herald; 

219 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

but if the information is accurate, it is a phe- 
nomenon worthy of notice. At various board- 
ing-schools, notably at Oundle under Mr. San- 
derson, at Clayesmore under Mr. Devine, and 
at St. George's School, Harpenden, under Mr. 
Grant, experiments in auto-education have 
been carried to notable lengths. The former 
group mentioned represents the attempt to 
stimulate character growth by the removal 
of adult authority: the latter depends more on 
the attempt to provide interest which shall 
open the doors of achievement to boys at all 
stages of their school career. Obviously the 
second plan is psychologically sounder than 
the first; for the mere removal of discipline 
may have a negative effect unless it is asso- 
ciated with a really infectious spirit of 
achievement, which automatically brings in its 
train a reconciliation to self-mastery. 

The problem of the collision between adult 
authority and the adolescent has been success- 
fully evaded in certain directions by the pre- 
fect system. There is another way in which it 
may be partly obviated. Too much care is 
sometimes taken to protect the child of civil- 
ization from the conditions which he must 
sooner or later learn to face on his own respon- 
sibility. The modern schoolmaster is not 
ashamed to put up a notice : '^All boys watch- 

220 



Educational Methods 

ingf the football match must wear overcoats/* 
and to enforce this regulation with punish- 
ment. The writer is not disposed to doubt that 
some boys and girls do need some outward 
assistance to draw their attention to matters 
such as this; but he would far rather that the 
notice should penalize all those boys who had 
watched the football match and had colds 
next day. Why punish a boy for not wearing 
an overcoat when he may be constitutionally 
able to do without it? And why suggest that 
the amount of clothing to be worn under any 
given meteorological conditions is a matter on 
which he has no more right to discretion than 
on the choice of school colours? 

There is no training that can compare in 
this way with sea training. Life at sea is the 
clearest statement of the demand for disci- 
pline, not from an external authority, but from 
the very nature of the situation. There the 
boy has to realize that he has to ensure, not 
only his own safety, but the safety of his craft 
and his crew, by taking thought so that he may 
not be caught unawares by the forces of Na- 
ture. If he ignores the threatening squall, or 
thinks to increase his comfort by making fast 
his main sheet; If he forgets his compass or 
can't be bothered with sounding, the reckon- 

221 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

ing has to be made not with adult authority, 
from which he hopes one day to be eman- 
cipated, but with Nature and her forces, whose 
terms he must always accept. The most ele- 
mentary experience of boating is enough to 
teach the boy or girl the fundamental basis of 
discipline: the impossibility of safeguarding 
the crew when one member cannot be relied 
upon to obey promptly. 

Furthermore, there are few forms of achieve- 
ment more valuable than the achievement over 
natural forces. The boy who has won a box- 
ing contest has undoubtedly achieved some- 
thing; but the boy who has climbed a lofty 
and difficult mountain-peak has achieved 
something still more valuable from the point 
of view of character-formation. Direct con- 
tact with the forces of Nature invariably in- 
troduces into achievement the two aspects of 
conquest and understanding. The mental 
quality which is expressed at its highest in the 
respect for personality is being trained by 
every necessity for understanding the way 
things work: from humouring the refractory 
engine to studying the conditions of growth 
for the plant or animal. 

The department of achievement that with 
many boys and most girls counts for most is 
the creative; and here again the sense of 

222 



Educational Methods 

achievement is a mingling of conquest and un- 
derstanding. Different temperaments will 
find a different degree of satisfaction in these 
two elements. Both are described by Berg- 
son in an illuminating passage^: *'A note- 
worthy fact is the extraordinary disproportion 
between the consequences of an invention and 
the invention itself. . . . Fabricating consists 
in shaping matter, in making it supple and 
bending it, in converting it into an instrument 
in order to become master of it. It is this 
mastery that profits humanity, much more even 
than the material result of the invention itself. 
Though we derive an immediate advantage 
from the thing made, as an intelligent animal 
might do, and though this advantage be all 
that the inventor sought, it is a slight matter 
compared with the new ideas and the new 
feelings that the invention may give rise to 
in every direction, as if the essential part of 
the effect were to raise us above ourselves, and 
enlarge our horizon." The last sentence is a 
convincing statement of the case for giving 
adequate opportunities of creative achieve- 
ment to the child at every stage of his develop- 
ment. 

^ Creative Evolution, by Henri Bergson. Authorized 
translation, by Arthur Mitchell, Ph.D. Macmillan & 
Co., 1920. p. 192 f. 

223 



The New Psychology and the Teacher 

The expression of the creative impulse is 
one of the criteria of value which we would 
apply to the child's achievements; but it is 
not the only one. Fretwork might satisf}^ this 
test to some extent, and provide also training 
in skill and co-ordination; but the demand for 
fretwork articles, even in the most apprecia- 
tive family, is so limited that it is an unsatis- 
factory form of creation to practise. The 
criterion of social value has to be applied, in 
no narrowly utilitarian sense, to the child's 
forms of self-expression. It is obviously de- 
sirable that emotional energy should be sub- 
limated along this line as far as possible. It 
is an interesting experiment to classify the 
various forms of achievement offered to the 
child according to their value, in giving op- 
portunity for the expression of rhythm, self- 
expression, social value, skill and co-ordina- 
tion, endurance and understanding; choosing, 
for example, such occupations as Dalcroze 
eurhythmies, folk-dancing, chip-carving, sew- 
ing, ambulance, sea-training, riding, cross- 
country running, and cricket. 

In laying stress on the development of the 
individual psyche and the child's right to ad- 
vance at his own pace and in his own way, it 
often appears that great practical difficulties 
must be placed in the way of education. Thefe 

224 



Educational Methods 

is also the danger of exaggerating the impor- 
tance of individual achievement at the expense 
of developing loyalty and co-operation. The 
balance between these two has been wonder- 
fully attained in certain scholastic experi- 
ments, notably those at Oundle, where team 
work plays a very important part. The pos- 
sibility of individual achievement is indeed 
very closely bound up with the principle of 
group work ; for it is often only by the division 
of labour that an end can be accomplished 
which satisfies the child's sense of achieve- 
ment, without overtaxing his powers. 

The points which have been touched upon 
in this chapter in connexion with the element 
of achievement in education illustrate one 
aspect of education on which it seems to the 
writer that the student of the new psychology 
will have gathered convictions. There are 
other aspects, and perhaps more important 
ones, on which nothing has been said ; but they 
lie outside the scope of this book, whose pur- 
pose it was to help the teacher to gain some- 
thing of the analytical point of view; and 
having done that, to draw his own conclu- 
sions. 



225 



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